head to head · open source
kong vs robusta
kong has 44,158 GitHub stars, 5,210 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. robusta has 3,099 stars, 325 forks, 204 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 1,325% (44,158 vs 3,099 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; robusta is written in Python under MIT. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, robusta 10%. robusta was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (devops, kubernetes), 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 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| kong | robusta | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 3.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-07 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 325 |
| 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 robusta if
- You want the robusta feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and robusta fits your workflow better
About kong
Kong (also known as Kong Gateway) is an open source, cloud native, platform agnostic API, LLM, and MCP gateway, licensed under Apache 2.0, built for platform, DevOps, and AI engineering teams that need a single high performance layer to route, secure, and observe both conventional API traffic and agentic LLM traffic.
About robusta
Robusta is an open source alerting and monitoring project for Kubernetes, written in Python and released under the MIT license. The repository contains Robusta Classic, a rule based alert enrichment engine that connects to Prometheus through a webhook and adds operational context to alerts. It lives in the Kubernetes monitoring ecosystem and is compatible with kube prometheus stack, Prometheus Operator, and other Prometheus based setups.
read the full robusta overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Cloud Infrastructure Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Cloud Infrastructure Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is kong or robusta more popular?
kong has 44,158 GitHub stars and robusta has 3,099. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and robusta free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and robusta under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and robusta?
kong is written in Lua and robusta in Python. 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 robusta?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,158 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose robusta if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.