head to head · open source
kong vs radar
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. radar has 4,019 stars, 265 forks, 89 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 1,003% (44,348 vs 4,019 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; radar is written in Go under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, radar 7%. radar 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, kubernetes), 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 | radar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 4.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 265 |
| 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 radar if
- You want the radar 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 radar 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 radar
Radar The missing open source Kubernetes UI. Single binary. No account required. Free forever. 🌐 radarhq.io · Docs · Releases Topology, resources, Helm, GitOps, traffic, audit, upgrade impact, and MCP context for AI agents — from your laptop or in cluster. Table of contents Why Radar? Installation Usage Views — Topology · Resources · Image Filesystem · Timeline · Helm · Compare · TLS · GitOps · Traffic · Cost · Audit · Upgrade impact · RBAC · MCP · Auth Supported Resources Keyboard Shortcuts Security Development · Contributing Install and run in 30 seconds: More installation options ↓ Why Radar? Zero install on…
read the full radar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or radar more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and radar has 4,019. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and radar free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and radar under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and radar?
kong is written in Lua and radar 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 radar?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose radar if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.