head to head · open source
kong vs kubevious
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. kubevious has 1,707 stars, 96 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. kong leads on adoption by 2,486% (44,147 vs 1,707 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; kubevious is written in various languages under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, kubevious 6%. 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 | kubevious | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | — |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-06-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 96 |
| 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 kubevious if
- You want the kubevious feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- You evaluated both and kubevious 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 kubevious
Kubevious is a suite of app centric assurance, validation, and introspection products for Kubernetes, and it lives in the cloud native ecosystem of containers, configuration, dashboards, and monitoring. The project is positioned as a way to run Kubernetes applications without disasters and costly outages.
read the full kubevious overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kubevious more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and kubevious has 1,707. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and kubevious free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kubevious under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and kubevious?
kong is written in Lua and kubevious in various languages. 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 kubevious?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kubevious if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.