head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs swag
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. swag has 13,024 stars, 1,547 forks, 476 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 54% (20,001 vs 13,024 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; swag is written in Go under MIT. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, swag 12%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (openapi, swagger), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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 | swag | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 13K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 swag if
- You want the swag feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and swag 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 swag
Swag is a command line tool that converts Go source annotations into Swagger 2.0 documentation. It lives in the Go ecosystem, is distributed under the MIT license, and is maintained by the swaggo organization. The project has been active for nine years, with the most recent push recorded in September 2026, and it carries roughly 13,000 stars and 1,545 forks on GitHub.
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or swag more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars and swag has 13,024. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and swag free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and swag under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and swag?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and swag 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 swag?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,001 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose swag if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.