Kong by Kong
The API and AI Gateway
About Kong
From the project's README at github.com/Kong/kong. Lightly cleaned for readability; for the full source see the upstream repo.
[![Build Status][badge-action-image]][badge-action-url] [](https://x.com/thekonginc)
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 well - with ease.
Kong runs natively on Kubernetes thanks to its official Kubernetes Ingress Controller.
Health score breakdown
6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.
Adoption signals
Real-world usage data, pulled from each registry. The bigger the numbers, the more battle-tested the project.
| Signal | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | 43k | github.com/Kong/kong |
| GitHub forks | 5.1k | github.com/Kong/kong |
| Docker Hub pulls | 7.0M | hub.docker.com / kong |
Release & maintenance
Is this project actively maintained, or about to die? Check the recency of last commit and last release.
| Project age | 11.6 years | since Nov 2014 |
| Last commit | 3 months ago | Mar 27, 2026 |
| Releases shipped | 145 | last: 1.1 years ago |
| Security policy | SECURITY.md | declared by maintainers |
Self-hosting cost across providers
Detected requirements: 4GB RAM, 40GB disk minimum. Cheapest plan per provider that meets the requirement.
| Provider | Plan | Specs | Monthly | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hetzner | CAX11 | 2c · 4GB · 40GB | $4.13 USD | Deploy → |
| vultr | VC2 | 1c · 1GB · 25GB | $5 USD | Deploy → |
| linode | Nanode 1GB | 1c · 1GB · 25GB | $5.12 USD | Deploy → |
| digitalocean | Basic Regular 1GB | 1c · 1GB · 25GB | $6 USD | Deploy → |
What people say on Hacker News
Ready to self-host Kong?
Spin up a hetzner CAX11 (4GB RAM, 40GB disk) for $4.13/mo and follow the project's official install docs.
Data last refreshed Jun 21, 2026.
Similar open-source projects
Projects in our directory that replace the same SaaS or share topics with Kong.