head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs Tyk
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tyk has 10,822 stars, 1,166 forks, 509 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 85% (20,001 vs 10,822 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; Tyk is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Tyk 11%. Tyk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, grpc), 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 | Tyk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Tyk if
- You want the Tyk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Tyk 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 Tyk
Tyk is an open source API Gateway written in Go. The GitHub description names Tyk as an Open Source API Gateway written in Go, supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols. The tagline names it a Universal API management for REST, GraphQL, gRPC and async. It lives in the developer tools, API development and testing ecosystem. It acts as a reverse proxy for microservices and cloud native workloads.
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or Tyk more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,001 GitHub stars and Tyk has 10,822. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and Tyk free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause, and Tyk has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and Tyk?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and Tyk 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 Tyk?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,001 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Tyk if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.