head to head · open source
caddy vs gost
caddy has 76,005 GitHub stars, 4,991 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gost has 7,522 stars, 830 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped yesterday. caddy leads on adoption by 910% (76,005 vs 7,522 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gost is written in Go under MIT. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, gost 11%. gost was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (golang, http, http3, https), 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 | gost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 830 |
| 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 gost if
- You want the gost feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gost 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 gost
gost, short for GO Simple Tunnel, is an MIT licensed tunnelling tool written in Go that unifies forward proxying, TCP/UDP port forwarding and reverse proxy tunnelling in a single binary, intended for network and infrastructure engineers who need to connect segmented networks, expose internal services, or route traffic through intermediaries without assembling several single purpose programs.
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or gost more popular?
caddy has 76,005 GitHub stars and gost has 7,522. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and gost free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gost under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caddy and gost?
caddy is written in Go and gost 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 gost?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (76,005 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gost if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.