head to head · open source
kong vs headlamp
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. headlamp has 7,553 stars, 1,201 forks, 1,422 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 487% (44,348 vs 7,553 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; headlamp is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, headlamp 16%. headlamp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (cloud-native, devops, 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 | headlamp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 headlamp if
- You want the headlamp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and headlamp 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 headlamp
NOTICE: We have recently moved the project under the Kubernetes SIG UI (and the repo under the kubernetes sigs org). Container images are still at ghcr.io. Please bear with us while we may experience some broken links. Headlamp is an easy to use and extensible Kubernetes web UI. Headlamp was created to blend the traditional feature set of other web UIs/dashboards (i.e., to list and view resources) with added functionality. Features Vendor independent / generic Kubernetes UI Works in cluster, or locally as a desktop app Multi cluster Extensible through plugins UI controls reflecting user roles (no deletion/update…
read the full headlamp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or headlamp more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and headlamp has 7,553. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and headlamp free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and headlamp under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and headlamp?
kong is written in Lua and headlamp in TypeScript. 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 headlamp?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose headlamp if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.