head to head · open source
kong vs Pulumi
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. Pulumi has 25,840 stars, 1,478 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 72% (44,348 vs 25,840 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; Pulumi is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Pulumi 6%. Pulumi 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 | Pulumi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 26K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 Pulumi if
- You want the Pulumi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Pulumi 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 Pulumi
Infrastructure as Code for Humans and Agents Pulumi Infrastructure as Code is the easiest way to build and deploy infrastructure, of any architecture and on any cloud, using programming languages that you already know and love. Code and ship infrastructure faster with your favorite languages and tools, and embed IaC anywhere with Automation API. Simply write code in your favorite language and Pulumi automatically provisions and manages your resources on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, and 300+ providers using an infrastructure as code approach. Skip the YAML, and use standard language features…
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or Pulumi more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,840. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and Pulumi free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pulumi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and Pulumi?
kong is written in Lua and Pulumi 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 Pulumi?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Pulumi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.