Kong Gateway vs Varnish Cache
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
Varnish Cache
High-performance HTTP accelerator and caching proxy
| Feature | Kong Gateway | Varnish Cache |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Language | Lua | C |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 43,947 | ★ 4,050 |
| First released | 2015 | 2006 |
| Replaces | AWS API Gateway, Apigee | Cloudflare, Squid |
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
Choose Varnish Cache if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (4k GitHub stars)
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Kong Gateway or Varnish Cache better?
Kong Gateway is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider Varnish Cache if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Kong Gateway and Varnish Cache free and open-source?
Yes. Kong Gateway is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Varnish Cache under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kong Gateway and Varnish Cache with Docker?
Kong Gateway: yes. Varnish Cache: yes.