head to head · open source
kong vs openebs
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. openebs has 9,812 stars, 983 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped today. kong leads on adoption by 350% (44,148 vs 9,812 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; openebs is written in various languages under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, openebs 10%. openebs 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, devops), 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 | openebs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 9.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | — |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 983 |
| 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 openebs if
- You want the openebs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- You evaluated both and openebs 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 openebs
OpenEBS is an open source, CNCF Sandbox container native storage platform that gives Kubernetes stateful applications persistent volumes through containerized storage controllers, and it is aimed at platform, infrastructure, and DevOps teams that run stateful workloads on Kubernetes.
read the full openebs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or openebs more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and openebs has 9,812. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and openebs free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and openebs under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and openebs?
kong is written in Lua and openebs 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 openebs?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,148 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose openebs if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.