head to head · open source
kong vs Cozystack
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Cozystack has 2,227 stars, 201 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 1,882% (44,147 vs 2,227 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; Cozystack is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Cozystack 9%. Cozystack was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | Cozystack | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 201 |
| 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 Cozystack if
- You want the Cozystack feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Cozystack 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 Cozystack
Cozystack is a free cloud platform and framework for building clouds inside the Kubernetes ecosystem. It is a CNCF Sandbox Level project originally built and sponsored by Ænix, and it is written in Go under the Apache 2.0 license. The project turns a group of servers into an intelligent infrastructure system that exposes a simple REST API for creating and managing cloud services.
read the full Cozystack overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or Cozystack more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and Cozystack has 2,227. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and Cozystack free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Cozystack under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and Cozystack?
kong is written in Lua and Cozystack 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 Cozystack?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Cozystack if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.