head to head · open source
kong vs jx
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. jx has 4,690 stars, 791 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped today. kong leads on adoption by 841% (44,148 vs 4,690 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; jx is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, jx 17%. jx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | jx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 4.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 791 |
| 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 jx if
- You want the jx 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 jx 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 jx
Jenkins X is an open source continuous integration and continuous delivery system for Kubernetes that automates CI and CD with preview environments on pull requests, built on cloud native pipelines from Tekton, and its jx component is the modular command line CLI used to drive it.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or jx more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and jx has 4,690. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and jx free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and jx under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and jx?
kong is written in Lua and jx 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 jx?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,148 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose jx if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.