head to head · open source
kong vs kcl
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. kcl has 2,440 stars, 177 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 1,718% (44,348 vs 2,440 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kong | kcl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 177 |
| 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 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 kcl
KCL: Constraint based Record & Functional Language English 简体中文 Introduction Features What is it for Installation Documentation Contributing Introduction KCL is an open source, constraint based record and functional language that enhances the writing of complex configurations, including those for cloud native scenarios. With its advanced programming language technology and practices, KCL is dedicated to promoting better modularity, scalability, and stability for configurations. It enables simpler logic writing and offers ease of automation APIs and integration with homegrown systems. What is it for? You can use…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kcl more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and kcl has 2,440. 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 (44,348 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.