head to head · open source
OpenTofu vs mcp-gateway
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars, 1,368 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mcp-gateway has 840 stars, 91 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. OpenTofu leads on adoption by 3,496% (30,209 vs 840 stars). OpenTofu is written in Go under MPL-2.0; mcp-gateway is written in C# under MIT. OpenTofu has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, mcp-gateway 11%. OpenTofu was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| OpenTofu | mcp-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 840 |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 91 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenTofu if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mcp-gateway if
- You want the mcp-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and mcp-gateway fits your workflow better
About OpenTofu
OpenTofu is an open source infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that enables users to define and manage cloud and on premises infrastructure using declarative configuration files. It lives in the cloud infrastructure management ecosystem and serves as a community driven fork of Terraform, maintaining compatibility with Terraform’s configuration language and provider ecosystem while operating under the MPL 2.0 license.
read the full OpenTofu overview →
About mcp-gateway
MCP Gateway MCP Gateway is a reverse proxy and management layer for Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers, enabling scalable, session aware routing, authorization and lifecycle management of MCP servers in Kubernetes environments. Table of Contents Overview Key Concepts Architecture Features Getting Started – Local Deployment Getting Started – 1 Click Deploy to Azure Overview This project provides: A data gateway for routing traffic to MCP servers with session affinity. A control plane for managing the MCP server lifecycle (deploy, update, delete). Enterprise ready integration points including telemetry, access co…
read the full mcp-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenTofu or mcp-gateway more popular?
OpenTofu has 30,209 GitHub stars and mcp-gateway has 840. OpenTofu has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenTofu and mcp-gateway free?
Both are open source. OpenTofu is licensed under MPL-2.0 and mcp-gateway under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenTofu and mcp-gateway?
OpenTofu is written in Go and mcp-gateway in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, OpenTofu or mcp-gateway?
Choose OpenTofu if you want the larger community (30,209 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose mcp-gateway if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.