Kong Gateway vs Pound
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?
Kong Gateway
Cloud-native, fast, scalable API gateway
VS
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
| Feature | Kong Gateway | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Lua | C |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 43,947 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2015 | 2002 |
| Replaces | AWS API Gateway, Apigee | NGINX, HAProxy |
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 Kong Gateway or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. Kong Gateway has the larger community, while Pound is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Kong Gateway and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. Kong Gateway is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kong Gateway and Pound with Docker?
Kong Gateway: yes. Pound: check the project docs for container support.