head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs prest
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars, 2,410 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. prest has 4,619 stars, 322 forks, 153 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 333% (20,001 vs 4,619 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 | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 322 |
| 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 is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About prest
pREST (PostgreSQL + REST) is a production ready, MIT licensed Go service that exposes an instant REST API and a read only Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint on top of any existing or new PostgreSQL database, built for teams that want CRUD, custom SQL routes, authentication and access control without hand writing a backend.
read the full prest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or prest more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars and prest has 4,619. 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 (20,001 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose prest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.