head to head · open source
kong vs robusta
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. robusta has 3,128 stars, 327 forks, 204 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 1,318% (44,348 vs 3,128 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; robusta is written in Python under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, robusta 10%. robusta was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, 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 | robusta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 327 |
| 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 robusta if
- You want the robusta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and robusta 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 robusta
Robusta Classic Prometheus Alert Enrichment for Kubernetes Note: This repository contains Robusta Classic — the rule based alert enrichment engine. For AI powered root cause analysis, see HolmesGPT. Both can be installed together as part of the Robusta platform. What Can Robusta Do? How it Works Installation Integrations ↗ Docs ↗ Slack Community ↗ Compatible with kube prometheus stack, Prometheus Operator, and more. Robusta integrates with Prometheus by webhook and adds features like: Smart Grouping reduce notification spam with Slack threads 🧵 AI Investigation Kickstart alert investigation with AI (optional)…
read the full robusta overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or robusta more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and robusta has 3,128. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and robusta free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and robusta under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and robusta?
kong is written in Lua and robusta in Python. 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 robusta?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose robusta if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.