gobetween vs Kong Gateway
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
gobetween
Modern L4 load balancer and reverse proxy
VS
Kong Gateway
Cloud-native, fast, scalable API gateway
| Feature | gobetween | Kong Gateway |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Lua |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,986 | ★ 43,947 |
| First released | 2016 | 2015 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, NGINX Plus | AWS API Gateway, Apigee |
Why pick each one
Choose Kong Gateway if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
- Mature project with 43.9k GitHub stars
Frequently asked questions
Is gobetween or Kong Gateway better?
Neither is universally better. Kong Gateway has the larger community, while gobetween is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are gobetween and Kong Gateway free and open-source?
Yes. gobetween is licensed under MIT and Kong Gateway under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run gobetween and Kong Gateway with Docker?
gobetween: yes. Kong Gateway: yes.