head to head · open source
Tailcall vs kiro-gateway
Tailcall has 7,637 GitHub stars, 1,467 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kiro-gateway has 2,281 stars, 551 forks, 103 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Tailcall leads on adoption by 235% (7,637 vs 2,281 stars). Tailcall is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; kiro-gateway is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Tailcall has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, kiro-gateway 24%. Tailcall 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
| Tailcall | kiro-gateway | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-05-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 551 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tailcall if
- You weight community size — 7.6K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Tailcall
Tailcall is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Rust based developer tool listed in this registry whose repository (tailcallhq/forgecode) and README present it as Forge, an AI enhanced terminal development environment: a command line coding agent that works against Claude, GPT, O Series, Grok, Deepseek, Gemini and, per its own description, more than 300 other models.
read the full Tailcall 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 Tailcall or kiro-gateway more popular?
Tailcall has 7,637 GitHub stars and kiro-gateway has 2,281. Tailcall has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailcall and kiro-gateway free?
Both are open source. Tailcall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and kiro-gateway under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailcall and kiro-gateway?
Tailcall is written in Rust 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, Tailcall or kiro-gateway?
Choose Tailcall if you want the larger community (7,637 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose kiro-gateway if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.