Kong
Microservice API Gateway and Platform.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 14 commits in the last 90 days, latest release 3.9.4 (Oct 2026).
Also an alternative to Kong Enterprise.
At a glance
Kong quick facts
- Health score
- 80/100 GOOD
- Stars
- 44,325
- Last commit
- 11 days ago (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- 3.9.4, Oct 2026
- Licence
- Apache-2.0
Top alternatives to Kong
Full rankings: Kong Enterprise alternatives
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Kong or Kong Gateway is a cloud-native, platform-agnostic, scalable API ๐งน LLM ๐งน 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."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Kong scores 80/100, #13 of 16 in Software Development - API Management: 14 commits in the last 90 days earn 16.3 of 35 points, the latest release (3.9.4, 18 days ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 44,325 stars add 18.6 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and Docker support adds the final 10. That places it in the good band (70 and above). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 18.7 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 16.3 / 35
14 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
3.9.4 released 18 days ago
- Stars 18.6 / 20
44k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 10.0 / 10
Docker image or Compose file available
Commit activity
- 14
- Last 90 days
- 33
- Last 12 months
- 11 days ago
- Last push
Ranked #13 of 16 tools in Software Development - API Management by health , between Graphweaver (#12) and Fusio (#14) .
Details
| Licence | Apache-2.0 |
| Platforms | Lua, Docker, K8S, deb |
| Latest release | 3.9.4 ยท 18 days ago |
| Stars | 44,325 |
| Open issues | 93 |
| Docker | Yes |
| Repository | Kong/kong โ |
Kong vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a comparison page or a category with Kong (Software Development - API Management), scored on the same five terms.
Kong: common questions
What does Kong replace?
Repoly lists Kong as an open-source alternative to Kong Enterprise. Each comparison page ranks every alternative by the same health score, so you can see where Kong stands against the others.
Is Kong still maintained?
Kong had 14 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 11 days ago; the latest tagged release, 3.9.4, is from 18 days ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.
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