head to head · open source
kong vs jet-pilot
kong has 44,265 GitHub stars, 5,235 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped yesterday. jet-pilot has 629 stars, 28 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 6,937% (44,265 vs 629 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; jet-pilot is written in Rust under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, jet-pilot 4%. kong was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (cloud-native, 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 | jet-pilot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 629 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 28 |
| 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 jet-pilot if
- You want the jet-pilot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and jet-pilot 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 jet-pilot
JET Pilot is a free, MIT licensed, native Kubernetes desktop client built in Rust and Tauri that gathers every cluster from every kubeconfig and cloud account into one local app, with no account and no telemetry.
read the full jet-pilot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or jet-pilot more popular?
kong has 44,265 GitHub stars and jet-pilot has 629. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and jet-pilot free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and jet-pilot under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and jet-pilot?
kong is written in Lua and jet-pilot in Rust. 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 jet-pilot?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,265 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose jet-pilot if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.