head to head · open source
kong vs openebs
kong has 44,344 GitHub stars, 5,237 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. openebs has 9,842 stars, 984 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 351% (44,344 vs 9,842 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 | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 984 |
| 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 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 openebs
OpenEBS Cloud Native Storage Overview OpenEBS is an open source Container Native Storage solution that provides persistent storage for Kubernetes workloads. It enables dynamic provisioning of storage resources using containerized storage controllers, making it highly flexible and cloud native. OpenEBS supports various storage engines, including LocalPVs for direct node storage and Replicated PV advanced data replication and resilience. It is designed to integrate seamlessly with Kubernetes, offering benefits like storage policies, resize, thin provisioning, snapshots, and restore capabilities, making it an ideal…
read the full openebs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or openebs more popular?
kong has 44,344 GitHub stars and openebs has 9,842. 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 (44,344 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.