head to head · open source
kong vs st2
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. st2 has 6,536 stars, 787 forks, 603 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 575% (44,148 vs 6,536 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; st2 is written in Python under Apache-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, st2 12%. kong 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 | st2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 787 |
| 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 st2 if
- You want the st2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and st2 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 st2
StackStorm — packaged and installed as st2 — is an open source, event driven automation platform, often described as "IFTTT for Ops", that ties existing infrastructure, monitoring and application tools together so DevOps engineers and SREs can automate remediation, incident response, troubleshooting and deployment as rules and workflows stored as code.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or st2 more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and st2 has 6,536. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and st2 free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and st2 under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and st2?
kong is written in Lua and st2 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 st2?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,148 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose st2 if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.