head to head · open source
kong vs chef
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. chef has 8,259 stars, 2,521 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 437% (44,348 vs 8,259 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; chef is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, chef 31%. chef 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 | chef | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 chef if
- You want the chef feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and chef 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 chef
Chef Infra Umbrella Project : Chef Infra Project State : Active Issues Response Time Maximum : 14 days Pull Request Response Time Maximum : 14 days Getting Started Chef Infra is a configuration management tool designed to bring automation to your entire infrastructure. Want to try Chef Infra? For Chef Infra usage, please refer to Learn Chef, our self paced, entirely free learning platform. Learn Chef also includes module based training for Chef Infra, as well as Chef Automate, Chef Habitat, and Chef InSpec. Other useful resources for Chef Infra users: Documentation: Source: Tickets/Issues: Slack: Chef Community…
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or chef more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and chef has 8,259. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and chef free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chef under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and chef?
kong is written in Lua and chef in Ruby. 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 chef?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chef if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.