head to head · open source
kong vs argo-cd
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. argo-cd has 24,517 stars, 8,116 forks, 4,362 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 81% (44,348 vs 24,517 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; argo-cd is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, argo-cd 33%. argo-cd 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 | argo-cd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 25K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 8.1K |
| 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 argo-cd if
- You want the argo-cd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and argo-cd fits your workflow better
About kong
[![][kong logo]][kong url] [![Build Status][badge action image]][badge action url] Kong or Kong Gateway is a cloud native, platform agnostic, scalable API 𖧹 LLM 𖧹 MCP Gateway distinguished for its high performance and extensibility via plugins. It also provides advanced AI traffic capabilities with multi LLM support, semantic security, MCP traffic security and analytics, and more. By providing functionality for proxying, routing, load balancing, health checking, authentication (and more), Kong serves as the central layer for orchestrating microservices or conventional API traffic and agentic LLM and MCP as…
About argo-cd
Releases: Code: Social: Argo CD Declarative Continuous Delivery for Kubernetes What is Argo CD? Argo CD is a declarative GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. Why Argo CD? 1. Application definitions, configurations, and environments should be declarative and version controlled. 1. Application deployment and lifecycle management should be automated, auditable, and easy to understand. Who uses Argo CD? Official Argo CD user list Documentation To learn more about Argo CD go to the complete documentation. Check live demo at Community Contribution, Discussion and Support You can reach the Argo CD community…
read the full argo-cd overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or argo-cd more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and argo-cd has 24,517. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and argo-cd free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and argo-cd under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and argo-cd?
kong is written in Lua and argo-cd 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, kong or argo-cd?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose argo-cd if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.