head to head · open source
redoc vs grpc-gateway
redoc has 25,913 GitHub stars, 2,395 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grpc-gateway has 20,001 stars, 2,409 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. redoc leads on adoption by 30% (25,913 vs 20,001 stars). redoc is written in TypeScript under MIT; grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause. redoc has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, grpc-gateway 12%. grpc-gateway was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (openapi, swagger), 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
| redoc | grpc-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 2.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick redoc if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick grpc-gateway if
- You want the grpc-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and grpc-gateway fits your workflow better
About redoc
Redoc is an open source tool for generating API reference documentation from OpenAPI definitions, formerly known as Swagger. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, ships under the MIT license, and is published on npm as the redoc package. By default it renders a responsive three panel layout: a left panel holding the search bar and navigation menu, a central panel holding the documentation itself, and a right panel showing request and response examples.
read the full redoc overview →
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway is a plugin for protoc , the Google protocol buffers compiler. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server that translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. The generated server follows the google.api.http annotations attached to those service definitions, so a single set of protobuf services can be exposed in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. It lives in the gRPC ecosystem, is written in Go, and is distributed under the BSD 3 Clause license.
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is redoc or grpc-gateway more popular?
redoc has 25,913 GitHub stars and grpc-gateway has 20,001. redoc has the larger community by that measure.
Are redoc and grpc-gateway free?
Both are open source. redoc is licensed under MIT and grpc-gateway under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between redoc and grpc-gateway?
redoc is written in TypeScript and grpc-gateway 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, redoc or grpc-gateway?
Choose redoc if you want the larger community (25,913 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose grpc-gateway if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.