head to head · open source
kong vs task
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. task has 16,157 stars, 910 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 173% (44,147 vs 16,157 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; task is written in Go under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, task 6%. task 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 | task | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 910 |
| 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 task if
- You want the task feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and task 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 task
Task is a fast, cross platform task runner and build tool, written in Go and inspired by Make, for developers and DevOps engineers who want to define and run project commands without maintaining a hand written Makefile.
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or task more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and task has 16,157. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and task free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and task under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and task?
kong is written in Lua and task 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 task?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.