head to head · open source
kong vs webhook
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. webhook has 12,134 stars, 875 forks, 127 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 264% (44,147 vs 12,134 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; webhook is written in Go under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, webhook 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 | webhook | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 12K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 875 |
| 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 webhook if
- You want the webhook feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and webhook 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 webhook
webhook is a lightweight, MIT licensed incoming webhook server written in Go that exposes HTTP endpoints which execute configured shell commands, built for developers and operators who want a push from GitHub, Bitbucket, Slack, or Mattermost to run a deploy or maintenance script on their own server.
read the full webhook overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or webhook more popular?
kong has 44,147 GitHub stars and webhook has 12,134. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and webhook free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and webhook under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and webhook?
kong is written in Lua and webhook 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 webhook?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,147 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose webhook if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.