head to head · open source
kong vs wasm3
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. wasm3 has 8,077 stars, 536 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. kong leads on adoption by 449% (44,348 vs 8,077 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; wasm3 is written in C under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, wasm3 7%. 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 | wasm3 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 536 |
| 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 wasm3 if
- You want the wasm3 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and wasm3 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 wasm3
[!NOTE] I regret to inform the community that since my house was destroyed by russians who invaded my country, Wasm3 will enter a minimal maintenance phase . At this time, I am unable to continue the development of new features. However, I am committed to keeping the project alive and will actively review and merge incoming Pull Requests. I deeply appreciate your understanding and support during this difficult period. Your contributions to Wasm3 are now more valuable than ever. Wasm3 A fast WebAssembly interpreter and the most universal WASM runtime. See CoreMark 1.0 and independent benchmarks. Your mileage may…
read the full wasm3 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or wasm3 more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and wasm3 has 8,077. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and wasm3 free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and wasm3 under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and wasm3?
kong is written in Lua and wasm3 in C. 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 wasm3?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose wasm3 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.