head to head · open source
kong vs jenkins
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. jenkins has 26,556 stars, 9,835 forks, 3,610 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 66% (44,147 vs 26,556 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; jenkins is written in Java under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, jenkins 37%. jenkins was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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
| kong | jenkins | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 27K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 9.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick kong if
- You weight community size — 44K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick jenkins if
- You want the jenkins feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and jenkins fits your workflow better
About kong
Kong (also known as Kong Gateway) is an open source, cloud native, platform agnostic API, LLM, and MCP gateway, licensed under Apache 2.0, built for platform, DevOps, and AI engineering teams that need a single high performance layer to route, secure, and observe both conventional API traffic and agentic LLM traffic.
About jenkins
Jenkins is an open source automation server built with Java and released under the MIT license. It lives in the continuous integration and continuous delivery ecosystem, where it has served as a central automation hub for roughly sixteen years. The project is developed in the open on GitHub, where it has accumulated 26,546 stars and 9,833 forks, and it is distributed through the official jenkins.io website alongside documentation, plugin listings, and release notes. Two release lines are maintained: a weekly line that carries all new features, improvements, and bug fixes, and a Long Term Support line that receive…
read the full jenkins overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or jenkins more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and jenkins has 26,556. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and jenkins free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and jenkins under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and jenkins?
kong is written in Lua and jenkins in Java. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, kong or jenkins?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose jenkins if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.