head to head · open source
kong vs Pulumi
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Pulumi has 25,694 stars, 1,431 forks, 2,419 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 72% (44,147 vs 25,694 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 | 2026-09-07 | 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 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 (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 Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source infrastructure as code tool that lets teams define and deploy cloud infrastructure using general purpose programming languages instead of YAML, aimed at developers, platform engineers, and agents working across AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
read the full Pulumi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or Pulumi more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and Pulumi has 25,694. 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 (44,147 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.