head to head · open source
kong vs devtron
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. devtron has 5,599 stars, 594 forks, 777 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 688% (44,147 vs 5,599 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; devtron is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, devtron 11%. devtron was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kong | devtron | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 5.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 594 |
| 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 devtron if
- You want the devtron 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 devtron 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 devtron
Devtron is an open source Kubernetes dashboard and management platform, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the Kubernetes and cloud native ecosystem, and its topic list places it alongside tools such as ArgoCD, Helm, and the managed clusters of AKS and EKS. The project describes itself as an AI native Kubernetes management platform that unifies application and infrastructure management, with an extensible dashboard as its main surface. The repository is six years old, has accumulated roughly 5,595 stars and 592 forks, and was last pushed in September 2026.
read the full devtron overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kong or devtron more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and devtron has 5,599. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and devtron free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and devtron under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and devtron?
kong is written in Lua and devtron 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 devtron?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose devtron if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.