head to head · open source
kong vs kics
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. kics has 2,730 stars, 385 forks, 312 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 1,524% (44,348 vs 2,730 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; kics is written in Open Policy Agent under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, kics 14%. kics was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | kics | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Open Policy Agent |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 385 |
| 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 kics if
- You want the kics feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Open Policy Agent
- You evaluated both and kics 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 kics
Find security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations early in the development cycle of your infrastructure as code with KICS by Checkmarx. KICS stands for K eeping I nfrastructure as C ode S ecure, it is open source and is a must have for any cloud native project. Supported Platforms <a href="
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kics more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and kics has 2,730. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and kics free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kics under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and kics?
kong is written in Lua and kics in Open Policy Agent. 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 kics?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kics if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.