head to head · open source
kong vs wtf
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars, 5,238 forks, 200 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. wtf has 17,139 stars, 867 forks, 107 open issues and last shipped 13 days ago. kong leads on adoption by 159% (44,348 vs 17,139 stars). kong is written in Lua under Apache-2.0; wtf is written in Go under MPL-2.0. kong has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, wtf 5%. wtf was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (devops), 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
| kong | wtf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 17K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 867 |
| 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 wtf if
- You want the wtf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and wtf fits your workflow better
About kong
[![][kong logo]][kong url] [![Build Status][badge action image]][badge action url] Kong or Kong Gateway is a cloud native, platform agnostic, scalable API 𖧹 LLM 𖧹 MCP Gateway distinguished for its high performance and extensibility via plugins. It also provides advanced AI traffic capabilities with multi LLM support, semantic security, MCP traffic security and analytics, and more. By providing functionality for proxying, routing, load balancing, health checking, authentication (and more), Kong serves as the central layer for orchestrating microservices or conventional API traffic and agentic LLM and MCP as…
About wtf
:rotating light: :warning: This project is going through some changes as we prepare for v1.0. This includes a rename from WTF to Tessera ! Stay tuned! :warning: :rotating light: WTF (aka 'wtfutil') is the personal information dashboard for your terminal, providing at a glance access to your very important but infrequently needed stats and data. Used by thousands of developers and tech people around the world, WTF is free and open source. To support the continued use and development of WTF, please consider sponsoring WTF via GitHub Sponsors. Are you a contributor or sponsor? Awesome! See here for how you can…
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Frequently asked questions
Is kong or wtf more popular?
kong has 44,348 GitHub stars and wtf has 17,139. kong has the larger community by that measure.
Are kong and wtf free?
Both are open source. kong is licensed under Apache-2.0 and wtf under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between kong and wtf?
kong is written in Lua and wtf 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, kong or wtf?
Choose kong if you want the larger community (44,348 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose wtf if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.