head to head · open source
kong vs octodns
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. octodns has 3,774 stars, 453 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 1,075% (44,348 vs 3,774 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; octodns is written in Python under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, octodns 12%. octodns 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 | octodns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 453 |
| 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 octodns if
- You want the octodns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and octodns 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 octodns
DNS as code Tools for managing DNS across multiple providers In the vein of infrastructure as code octoDNS provides a set of tools & patterns that make it easy to manage your DNS records across multiple providers. The resulting config can live in a repository and be deployed just like the rest of your code, maintaining a clear history and using your existing review & workflow. The architecture is pluggable and the tooling is flexible to make it applicable to a wide variety of use cases. Effort has been made to make adding new providers as easy as possible. In the simple case that involves writing of a single…
read the full octodns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or octodns more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and octodns has 3,774. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and octodns free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and octodns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and octodns?
kong is written in Lua and octodns in Python. 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 octodns?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose octodns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.