head to head · open source
kong vs bunkerweb
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. bunkerweb has 10,973 stars, 642 forks, 170 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 302% (44,148 vs 10,973 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.
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Side by side
| kong | bunkerweb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 642 |
| 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 (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 bunkerweb
BunkerWeb is a next generation, open source, cloud native Web Application Firewall built as a full featured web server on top of NGINX, designed to make web services secure by default, and it is aimed at teams running web services on Linux, Docker, Swarm, or Kubernetes who want protection in place as a reverse proxy rather than assembled by hand.
read the full bunkerweb overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or bunkerweb more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and bunkerweb has 10,973. 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 (44,148 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.