head to head · open source
kong vs Yearning
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Yearning has 8,972 stars, 2,032 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 25 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 392% (44,148 vs 8,972 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; Yearning is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Yearning 23%. 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 | Yearning | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-08-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| 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 Yearning if
- You want the Yearning feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Yearning 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 Yearning
Yearning is a locally deployed, open source SQL audit and query auditing platform for MySQL, built in Go and aimed at DBAs and developers who need SQL review, approval workflows and query control inside their own infrastructure.
read the full Yearning overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or Yearning more popular?
kong has 44,148 GitHub stars and Yearning has 8,972. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and Yearning free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Yearning under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and Yearning?
kong is written in Lua and Yearning 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 Yearning?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,148 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Yearning if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.