head to head · open source
AdGuardHome vs bfe
AdGuardHome has 37,045 GitHub stars, 2,524 forks, 1,253 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. bfe has 6,264 stars, 950 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped yesterday. AdGuardHome leads on adoption by 491% (37,045 vs 6,264 stars). AdGuardHome is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; bfe is written in Go under Apache-2.0. AdGuardHome has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, bfe 15%. bfe was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (golang), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| AdGuardHome | bfe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 950 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick AdGuardHome if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bfe if
- You want the bfe feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and bfe fits your workflow better
About AdGuardHome
AdGuard Home is a free and open source, network wide DNS server that blocks ads and trackers for every device on a network, aimed at self hosters, homelab operators, and network administrators who want filtering without installing client side software on each device.
read the full AdGuardHome overview →
About bfe
BFE (Beyond Front End) is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed layer 7 load balancer written in Go, originally built at Baidu and now a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project, intended for platform, infrastructure, and networking engineers who need content based routing and centralized traffic management in front of backend services.
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Frequently asked questions
Is AdGuardHome or bfe more popular?
AdGuardHome has 37,045 GitHub stars and bfe has 6,264. AdGuardHome has the larger community by that measure.
Are AdGuardHome and bfe free?
Both are open source. AdGuardHome is licensed under GPL-3.0 and bfe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between AdGuardHome and bfe?
AdGuardHome is written in TypeScript and bfe in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, AdGuardHome or bfe?
Choose AdGuardHome if you want the larger community (37,045 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose bfe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.