head to head · open source
kong vs open-ontologies
kong has 44,163 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. open-ontologies has 530 stars, 72 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 8,233% (44,163 vs 530 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; open-ontologies is written in Rust under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, open-ontologies 14%. open-ontologies 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 | open-ontologies | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 530 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 72 |
| 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 open-ontologies if
- You want the open-ontologies feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and open-ontologies 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 open-ontologies
Open Ontologies is an MIT licensed Rust engine for planning, applying and rolling back changes to a production ontology: it reports the blast radius of a change before it lands and emits a proof an auditor can re check without trusting the person who made the change.
read the full open-ontologies overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or open-ontologies more popular?
kong has 44,163 GitHub stars and open-ontologies has 530. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and open-ontologies free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and open-ontologies under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and open-ontologies?
kong is written in Lua and open-ontologies in Rust. 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 open-ontologies?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,163 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose open-ontologies if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.