head to head · open source
one-api vs api-firewall
one-api has 36,940 GitHub stars, 6,867 forks, 1,036 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. api-firewall has 654 stars, 62 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. one-api leads on adoption by 5,548% (36,940 vs 654 stars). one-api is written in JavaScript under MIT; api-firewall is written in Go under MPL-2.0. one-api has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, api-firewall 9%. api-firewall was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (api, api-gateway), 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
| one-api | api-firewall | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 654 |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-01-09 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 62 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick one-api if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick api-firewall if
- You want the api-firewall feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and api-firewall fits your workflow better
About one-api
One API is a self hosted LLM API management and key redistribution system that exposes many model providers through the standard OpenAI API format, aimed at developers, teams and operators who want a single endpoint, a single key model and a single quota surface across providers.
read the full one-api overview →
About api-firewall
Open Source API Firewall by Wallarm API Firewall is a high performance proxy with API request and response validation based on OpenAPI and GraphQL schemas. It is designed to protect REST and GraphQL API endpoints in cloud native environments. API Firewall provides API hardening with the use of a positive security model allowing calls that match a predefined API specification for requests and responses, while rejecting everything else. The key features of API Firewall are: Secure REST and GraphQL API endpoints by blocking malicious requests Stop API data breaches by blocking malformed API responses Discover Shadow…
read the full api-firewall overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is one-api or api-firewall more popular?
one-api has 36,940 GitHub stars and api-firewall has 654. one-api has the larger community by that measure.
Are one-api and api-firewall free?
Both are open source. one-api is licensed under MIT and api-firewall under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between one-api and api-firewall?
one-api is written in JavaScript and api-firewall 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, one-api or api-firewall?
Choose one-api if you want the larger community (36,940 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose api-firewall if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.