head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs Tailcall
grpc-gateway has 20,008 GitHub stars, 2,413 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tailcall has 7,633 stars, 1,456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 162% (20,008 vs 7,633 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; Tailcall is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Tailcall 19%. grpc-gateway 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
| grpc-gateway | Tailcall | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 7.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick grpc-gateway if
- You weight community size — 20K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Tailcall if
- You want the Tailcall feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Tailcall fits your workflow better
About grpc-gateway
gRPC Gateway gRPC to JSON proxy generator following the gRPC HTTP spec About The gRPC Gateway is a plugin of the Google protocol buffers compiler protoc. It reads protobuf service definitions and generates a reverse proxy server which translates a RESTful HTTP API into gRPC. This server is generated according to the google.api.http annotations in your service definitions. This helps you provide your APIs in both gRPC and RESTful style at the same time. Docs You can read our docs at: Testimonials We use the gRPC Gateway to serve millions of API requests per day, and have been since 2018 and through all of that…
read the full grpc-gateway overview →
About Tailcall
⚒️ Forge: AI Enhanced Terminal Development Environment A comprehensive coding agent that integrates AI capabilities with your development environment curl fsSL sh Table of Contents Quickstart Usage Examples Why Forge? How Forge Works: Three Modes Interactive Mode (TUI) One Shot CLI Mode ZSH Plugin Mode ( : prefix) ZSH Plugin: The : Prefix System Agents Sending Prompts Attaching Files Conversation Management Git Integration Shell Command Tools Session & Configuration Skills Customizing Agent Behavior Semantic Search (Workspace) Quick Reference: All : Commands Command Line Options Advanced Configuration Provider…
read the full Tailcall overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or Tailcall more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,008 GitHub stars and Tailcall has 7,633. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and Tailcall free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Tailcall under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and Tailcall?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and Tailcall in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, grpc-gateway or Tailcall?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,008 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Tailcall if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.