head to head · open source
AdGuardHome vs bfe
AdGuardHome has 38,244 GitHub stars, 2,606 forks, 1,253 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. bfe has 6,272 stars, 949 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. AdGuardHome leads on adoption by 510% (38,244 vs 6,272 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%. AdGuardHome 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 | ★ 38K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.6K | ⑂ 949 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick AdGuardHome if
- You weight community size — 38K 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
Privacy protection center for you and your devices Free and open source, powerful network wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server. AdGuard.com Wiki Reddit Twitter Telegram AdGuard Home is a network wide software for blocking ads and tracking. After you set it up, it'll cover ALL your home devices, and you don't need any client side software for that. It operates as a DNS server that re routes tracking domains to a “black hole”, thus preventing your devices from connecting to those servers. It's based on software we use for our public [AdGuard DNS] servers, and both share a lot of code. [AdGuard DNS]: Getting…
read the full AdGuardHome overview →
About bfe
BFE English 中文 BFE (Beyond Front End) is a modern layer 7 load balancer from baidu. BFE is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project. Introduction BFE opensource project includes several components, which can be used together as a integrated layer 7 load balancer and traffic management solution. BFE system consists of data plane and control plane: Data plane：responsible for forwarding user's traffic, including below component: BFE Server：BFE forward engine (this repository, bfenetworks/bfe). BFE Server performs content based routing, load balancing and forwards the traffic to backend servers…
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Frequently asked questions
Is AdGuardHome or bfe more popular?
AdGuardHome has 38,244 GitHub stars and bfe has 6,272. 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 (38,244 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.