head to head · open source
kong vs kcl
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. kcl has 2,415 stars, 170 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 1,728% (44,147 vs 2,415 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; kcl is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, kcl 7%. kcl 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 | kcl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 kcl if
- You want the kcl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kcl 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 kcl
KCL is an open source, constraint based record and functional language, hosted as a CNCF Sandbox project and licensed under Apache 2.0, for platform engineers, DevOps teams, and cloud native practitioners who need to write, validate, and manage complex configuration without hand maintaining raw YAML or JSON.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kcl more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and kcl has 2,415. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and kcl free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kcl under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and kcl?
kong is written in Lua and kcl 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 kcl?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kcl if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.