head to head · open source
kong vs kubewall
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. kubewall has 1,938 stars, 102 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 2,178% (44,147 vs 1,938 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; kubewall is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, kubewall 5%. kubewall 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 | kubewall | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 102 |
| 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 kubewall if
- You want the kubewall feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and kubewall 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 kubewall
kubewall is an open source Kubernetes dashboard for managing, monitoring, and debugging Kubernetes clusters from a browser. It lives in the cloud native and DevOps ecosystem, where operators need one interface for cluster state, workloads, logs, metrics, and configuration. It is licensed under Apache 2.0 and written in TypeScript, with topics associating it with Go, kubectl, and Kubernetes debugging.
read the full kubewall overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kubewall more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and kubewall has 1,938. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and kubewall free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kubewall under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and kubewall?
kong is written in Lua and kubewall in TypeScript. 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 kubewall?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kubewall if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.