head to head · open source
caddy vs bfe
caddy has 78,878 GitHub stars, 5,246 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. bfe has 6,272 stars, 949 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. caddy leads on adoption by 1,158% (78,878 vs 6,272 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; bfe is written in Go under Apache-2.0. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, bfe 15%. caddy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (golang, reverse-proxy), 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
| caddy | bfe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-07 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 949 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caddy if
- You weight community size — 79K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 caddy
a project Every site on HTTPS Caddy is an extensible server platform that uses TLS by default. Releases · Documentation · Get Help Powered by Special thanks to: Warp, built for coding with multiple AI agents Available for MacOS, Linux, & Windows Menu Features Install Build from source For development With version information and/or plugins Quick start Overview Full documentation Getting help About Features Easy configuration with the Caddyfile Powerful configuration with its native JSON config Dynamic configuration with the JSON API Config adapters if you don't like JSON Automatic HTTPS by default ZeroSSL and…
read the full caddy 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 caddy or bfe more popular?
caddy has 78,878 GitHub stars and bfe has 6,272. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and bfe free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bfe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caddy and bfe?
caddy is written in Go 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, caddy or bfe?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (78,878 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bfe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.