head to head · open source
kong vs aws-cdk
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. aws-cdk has 12,899 stars, 4,631 forks, 2,863 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 242% (44,147 vs 12,899 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; aws-cdk is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, aws-cdk 36%. aws-cdk 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
| kong | aws-cdk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 4.6K |
| 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 aws-cdk if
- You want the aws-cdk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and aws-cdk 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 aws-cdk
AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) is an open source software development framework for defining cloud infrastructure in code and provisioning it through AWS CloudFormation. It lives in the AWS ecosystem and ships under the Apache 2.0 license, with the core implementation written in TypeScript. The framework offers a high level object oriented abstraction that lets developers define AWS resources imperatively using modern programming languages rather than writing raw CloudFormation templates by hand.
read the full aws-cdk overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or aws-cdk more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and aws-cdk has 12,899. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and aws-cdk free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and aws-cdk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and aws-cdk?
kong is written in Lua and aws-cdk in TypeScript. 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 aws-cdk?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose aws-cdk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.