head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs prest
grpc-gateway has 20,008 GitHub stars, 2,413 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. prest has 4,630 stars, 324 forks, 153 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 332% (20,008 vs 4,630 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; prest is written in Go under MIT. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, prest 7%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| grpc-gateway | prest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 324 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick grpc-gateway if
- You weight community size — 20K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick prest if
- You want the prest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and prest fits your workflow better
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway gRPC to JSON proxy generator following the gRPC HTTP spec About The gRPC Gateway is a plugin of the Google protocol buffers compiler protoc. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server which translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. This server is generated according to the google.api.http annotations in your service definitions. This helps you provide your APIs in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. Docs You can read our docs at: Testimonials We use the gRPC Gateway to serve millions of API requests per day, and have been since 2018 and through all of that…
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About prest
pRESTd p REST ( P ostgreSQL REST ) is a production ready API that delivers instant REST and Model Context Protocol (MCP) APIs on top of your existing or new Postgres database—CRUD, custom SQL routes, auth, ACL, and a read only MCP endpoint—without hand writing a backend. PostgreSQL version 9.5 or higher Contributor License Agreement — Documentation Full documentation lives at docs.prestd.com. Quick start Install and run options (Docker, Homebrew, or Go) are documented in Get pREST. Point pREST at Postgres ( PREST PG URL or pg. / DATABASE URL ), then call: See Configuring pREST for auth, ACL, custom queries, and…
read the full prest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or prest more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,008 GitHub stars and prest has 4,630. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and prest free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and prest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and prest?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and prest in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, grpc-gateway or prest?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,008 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose prest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.