head to head · open source
kong vs floci
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. floci has 27,815 stars, 3,110 forks, 130 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 59% (44,348 vs 27,815 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; floci is written in Java under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, floci 11%. floci 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 | floci | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 28K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 floci if
- You want the floci feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and floci 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 floci
Any Cloud. Locally. Light, fluffy, and always free No account. No auth token. No feature gates. Just docker compose up . Quick Start · Features · Services · SDKs · Testcontainers · Migration · Docs What is Floci? Floci is a free, open source local AWS emulator for development, testing, and CI. It gives you AWS shaped services on your machine without requiring a cloud account, an auth token, or paid feature gates. Point your AWS SDK, CLI, Terraform, CDK, OpenTofu, or test suite at and keep your existing workflows. Already using LocalStack? Floci is a drop in replacement: swap the image and keep going. See…
read the full floci overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or floci more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and floci has 27,815. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and floci free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and floci under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and floci?
kong is written in Lua and floci in Java. 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 floci?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose floci if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.