head to head · open source
kong vs kubewall
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. kubewall has 1,948 stars, 106 forks, 26 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 2,177% (44,348 vs 1,948 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 | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 106 |
| 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 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 kubewall
kubewall Install Guide Releases Source Code kubewall is a Open Source, Single Binary Kubernetes Dashboard with Multi Cluster Management & AI Integration. It provides a simple and rich realtime interface to manage and investigate your clusters. :battery: Install 🐳 Docker ⛵ Helm 🛡️ With helm kubewall runs on port 8443 with self signed certificates. View chart → 🍺 Homebrew 🧃 Snap 🐧 Arch Linux 🪟 Winget 📦 Scoop 📁 Binary MacOS Binary ( Multi Architecture ) Linux (Binaries) amd64 arm64 i386 Windows (exe) amd64 arm64 i386 Manually 📂 Download the pre compiled binaries from the Release! page and copy them to the…
read the full kubewall overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or kubewall more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and kubewall has 1,948. 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 (44,348 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.