head to head · open source
kong vs eNMS
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. eNMS has 846 stars, 160 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. kong leads on adoption by 5,142% (44,348 vs 846 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; eNMS is written in Python under GPL-3.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, eNMS 19%. kong 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.
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Side by side
| kong | eNMS | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 846 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-05-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 eNMS if
- You want the eNMS feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and eNMS 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 eNMS
eNMS An enterprise grade vendor agnostic network automation platform. Introduction eNMS is a vendor agnostic NMS designed for building workflow based network automation solutions. It encompasses the following aspects of network automation: Configuration Management Service : Backup with Git, change and rollback of configurations. Validation Services : Validate data about the state of a device with Netmiko and NAPALM. Ansible Service : Store and run Ansible playbooks. REST Service : Send REST calls with variable URL and payload. Python Script Service : Any python script can be integrated into the web UI. eNMS will…
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or eNMS more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and eNMS has 846. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and eNMS free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and eNMS under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and eNMS?
kong is written in Lua and eNMS in Python. 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 eNMS?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose eNMS if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.