head to head · open source
kong vs certimate
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. certimate has 9,309 stars, 901 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 374% (44,148 vs 9,309 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; certimate is written in Go under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, certimate 10%. certimate 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 | certimate | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 9.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 901 |
| 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 certimate if
- You want the certimate feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certimate 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 certimate
Certimate is an open source, MIT licensed, self hosted ACME client that automates the full lifecycle of SSL/TLS certificates — issuance, deployment, renewal, and monitoring — through a visual workflow, and it is built for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams who manage certificates across many domains, registrars, and hosting providers.
read the full certimate overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or certimate more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and certimate has 9,309. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and certimate free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and certimate under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and certimate?
kong is written in Lua and certimate 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 certimate?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,148 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose certimate if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.