head to head · open source
kong vs task
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. task has 16,326 stars, 941 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kong leads on adoption by 172% (44,348 vs 16,326 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 | 2026-10-19 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 941 |
| 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 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 task
Task: The Modern Task Runner A fast, cross platform build tool inspired by Make, designed for modern workflows. Installation • Getting Started • Docs • Twitter • Bluesky • Mastodon • Discord Gold Sponsors Community Sponsors Package hosting provided by Cloudsmith . Tooling provided by JetBrains .
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or task more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and task has 16,326. 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 (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.