head to head · open source
kong vs spug
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. spug has 11,101 stars, 2,199 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 299% (44,348 vs 11,101 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; spug is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, spug 20%. spug was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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 | spug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 spug if
- You want the spug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and spug 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 spug
English 简体中文 Spug Spug is a lightweight agent free automatic operation and maintenance platform designed for small and medium sized enterprises. It integrates host management, host batch execution, host online terminal, file management, application release and deployment, pipelines, online task planning, configuration center, monitoring, alarm and so on. Demo Demo： The demo environment runs the latest version and resets its data every hour, both the English and the Simplified Chinese interface are available from the globe icon in the header. 🔥Push Assistant Push Assistant is a message push platform that…
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or spug more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and spug has 11,101. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and spug free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and spug under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and spug?
kong is written in Lua and spug in JavaScript. 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 spug?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose spug if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.