head to head · open source
one-api vs higress
one-api has 36,932 GitHub stars, 6,867 forks, 1,036 open issues and last shipped 8 months ago. higress has 9,397 stars, 1,304 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. one-api leads on adoption by 293% (36,932 vs 9,397 stars). one-api is written in JavaScript under MIT; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. one-api has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. higress was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| one-api | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-01-09 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.9K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and higress 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 higress
Higress is a cloud native, AI native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy that targets platform engineering and AI infrastructure teams who need to route LLM API traffic and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers through a single extensible, self hosted gateway.
read the full higress overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More API Development & Testing projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the API Development & Testing field.
Frequently asked questions
Is one-api or higress more popular?
one-api has 36,932 GitHub stars and higress has 9,397. one-api has the larger community by that measure.
Are one-api and higress free?
Both are open source. one-api is licensed under MIT and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between one-api and higress?
one-api is written in JavaScript and higress 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 higress?
Choose one-api if you want the larger community (36,932 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.