head to head · open source
kong vs Yearning
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. Yearning has 8,977 stars, 2,034 forks, 165 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. kong leads on adoption by 394% (44,348 vs 8,977 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 | 2026-10-19 | 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 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 Yearning
Yearning A robust, locally deployed platform designed for seamless SQL detection and query auditing, tailored specifically for DBAs and developers. Focused on privacy and efficiency, it provides an intuitive and secure environment for MYSQL auditing. ?style=flat square&logoColor=white&logo=linux) [![][github license shield]][github license link] [![][github forks shield]][github forks link] [![][github stars shield]][github stars link] English 简体中文 日本語 ✨ Features AI Assistant : Our AI assistant offers real time SQL optimization suggestions, enhancing SQL performance. It also supports text to SQL conversion…
read the full Yearning overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or Yearning more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and Yearning has 8,977. 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 (44,348 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.