head to head · open source
kong vs chef
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. chef has 8,238 stars, 2,519 forks, 411 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 436% (44,148 vs 8,238 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 | ★ 8.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| 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 (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 chef
Chef Infra configuration management tool for automating infrastructure configuration, deployment, and management across any environment, at any scale, for DevOps engineers and infrastructure teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or chef more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and chef has 8,238. 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 (44,148 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.