head to head · open source
caddy vs bfe
caddy has 76,036 GitHub stars, 4,994 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. bfe has 6,264 stars, 950 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped yesterday. caddy leads on adoption by 1,114% (76,036 vs 6,264 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%. bfe 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 | ★ 76K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 950 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caddy if
- You weight community size — 76K 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
Caddy is a Go based, Apache 2.0 licensed HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 web server and reverse proxy that obtains and renews TLS certificates automatically by default, built for operators and teams who want every site on HTTPS without maintaining a separate certificate workflow.
read the full caddy 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 caddy or bfe more popular?
caddy has 76,036 GitHub stars and bfe has 6,264. 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 (76,036 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.