head to head · open source
kong vs goss
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. goss has 5,971 stars, 501 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 639% (44,147 vs 5,971 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; goss is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, goss 8%. goss 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 | goss | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 501 |
| 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 goss if
- You want the goss 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 goss 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 goss
Goss is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Go based YAML test runner that validates the configuration of a server or container and can expose the result as a health endpoint, built for DevOps engineers and SREs who need fast, repeatable checks on Linux hosts, Docker containers, and Kubernetes workloads.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or goss more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and goss has 5,971. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and goss free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and goss under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and goss?
kong is written in Lua and goss 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 goss?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose goss if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.