head to head · open source
kong vs spug
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. spug has 11,073 stars, 2,196 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 299% (44,147 vs 11,073 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kong | spug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-16 |
| 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 (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 spug
Spug is a lightweight, agent free automatic operations and maintenance platform for small and medium sized enterprises, combining host management, batch execution, a browser terminal, file management, application release, pipelines, task planning, a configuration center, monitoring, and alerting in one AGPL 3.0 open source system.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kong or spug more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and spug has 11,073. 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 (44,147 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.