head to head · open source
RWKV-Runner vs kiro-gateway
RWKV-Runner has 6,482 GitHub stars, 601 forks, 178 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. kiro-gateway has 2,281 stars, 551 forks, 103 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. RWKV-Runner leads on adoption by 184% (6,482 vs 2,281 stars). RWKV-Runner is written in TypeScript under MIT; kiro-gateway is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. RWKV-Runner has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, kiro-gateway 24%. RWKV-Runner was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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
| RWKV-Runner | kiro-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.5K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-04 | 2026-05-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 601 | ⑂ 551 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick RWKV-Runner if
- You weight community size — 6.5K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kiro-gateway if
- You want the kiro-gateway feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and kiro-gateway fits your workflow better
About RWKV-Runner
RWKV Runner is a management and startup tool for RWKV, an open source large language model that is available for commercial use. It ships as a lightweight executable of only a few megabytes and automates the work of getting a model running, so that the user does not have to assemble the runtime, dependencies, and serving stack by hand. The project is written in TypeScript and built with Wails, and it is distributed under the MIT license from the josStorer repository. It lives in the RWKV ecosystem and in the broader local inference tooling space, with a companion site at rwkv.com.
read the full RWKV-Runner overview →
About kiro-gateway
Kiro Gateway is an open source proxy API gateway that turns the Claude and other models available inside Kiro IDE and Kiro CLI (Amazon Q Developer / AWS CodeWhisperer) into OpenAI and Anthropic compatible API endpoints, for developers who want to reach those models from any client.
read the full kiro-gateway overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is RWKV-Runner or kiro-gateway more popular?
RWKV-Runner has 6,482 GitHub stars and kiro-gateway has 2,281. RWKV-Runner has the larger community by that measure.
Are RWKV-Runner and kiro-gateway free?
Both are open source. RWKV-Runner is licensed under MIT and kiro-gateway under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between RWKV-Runner and kiro-gateway?
RWKV-Runner is written in TypeScript and kiro-gateway 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, RWKV-Runner or kiro-gateway?
Choose RWKV-Runner if you want the larger community (6,482 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kiro-gateway if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.