head to head · open source
kong vs bunkerweb
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. bunkerweb has 11,208 stars, 666 forks, 170 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 296% (44,348 vs 11,208 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; bunkerweb is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, bunkerweb 6%. bunkerweb was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, kubernetes), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kong | bunkerweb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 666 |
| 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 bunkerweb if
- You want the bunkerweb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and bunkerweb 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 bunkerweb
🌐 Website & 124; 🤝 Panel & 124; 📓 Documentation & 124; 👨💻 Demo & 124; 📱 Demo UI & 124; 🧩 Templates & 124; 🛡️ Examples 💬 Chat & 124; 📝 Forum & 124; 📝 Community & 124; 🗺️ Threatmap & 124; 📊 Status & 124; 🔎 Feedback 🛡️ Make security by default great again! BunkerWeb BunkerWeb is a next generation, open source Web Application Firewall (WAF). Being a full featured web server (based on NGINX under the hood), it will protect your web services to make them "secure by default." BunkerWeb integrates seamlessly into your existing environments (Linux, Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, …) as a reverse proxy and is…
read the full bunkerweb overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kong or bunkerweb more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and bunkerweb has 11,208. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and bunkerweb free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bunkerweb under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and bunkerweb?
kong is written in Lua and bunkerweb in Python. 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 bunkerweb?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bunkerweb if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.