head to head · open source
kong vs OpenTofu
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. OpenTofu has 30,204 stars, 1,367 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 46% (44,147 vs 30,204 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, OpenTofu 5%. OpenTofu 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 | OpenTofu | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 30K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 OpenTofu if
- You want the OpenTofu feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and OpenTofu 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 OpenTofu
OpenTofu is an open source infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that enables users to define and manage cloud and on premises infrastructure using declarative configuration files. It lives in the cloud infrastructure management ecosystem and serves as a community driven fork of Terraform, maintaining compatibility with Terraform’s configuration language and provider ecosystem while operating under the MPL 2.0 license.
read the full OpenTofu overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or OpenTofu more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and OpenTofu has 30,204. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and OpenTofu free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenTofu under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and OpenTofu?
kong is written in Lua and OpenTofu in Go. 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 OpenTofu?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenTofu if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.