head to head · open source
grpc-gateway vs Tyk
grpc-gateway has 20,012 GitHub stars, 2,415 forks, 149 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tyk has 10,873 stars, 1,169 forks, 509 open issues and last shipped yesterday. grpc-gateway leads on adoption by 84% (20,012 vs 10,873 stars). grpc-gateway is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; Tyk is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. grpc-gateway has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, Tyk 11%. Tyk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (go, grpc), 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
| grpc-gateway | Tyk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 20K | ★ 11K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 Tyk if
- You want the Tyk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Tyk 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 Tyk
Documentation Forum Blog About Tyk API Gateway Tyk Gateway is the cloud native, open source, enterprise ready API Gateway supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols. Built from the ground up, as the fastest API Gateway on the planet since 2014. Tyk Gateway is provided ‘Batteries included’, with no feature lockout. Enabling your organization to rate limit, auth, gather analytics, apply microservice patterns and more with ease. Tyk runs natively on Kubernetes , if you prefer, thanks to the Tyk Kubernetes Operator Everything you need to manage APIs. Follow the simple Get Started guide below 👇 The Enterprise…
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Frequently asked questions
Is grpc-gateway or Tyk more popular?
grpc-gateway has 20,012 GitHub stars and Tyk has 10,873. grpc-gateway has the larger community by that measure.
Are grpc-gateway and Tyk free?
Both are open source. grpc-gateway is licensed under BSD-3-Clause, and Tyk has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between grpc-gateway and Tyk?
grpc-gateway is written in Go and Tyk 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, grpc-gateway or Tyk?
Choose grpc-gateway if you want the larger community (20,012 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Tyk if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.