head to head · open source
caddy vs OpenVPN
caddy has 78,660 GitHub stars, 5,232 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenVPN has 14,763 stars, 3,424 forks, 226 open issues and last shipped yesterday. caddy leads on adoption by 433% (78,660 vs 14,763 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; OpenVPN is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, OpenVPN 23%. OpenVPN was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | OpenVPN | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| 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 OpenVPN if
- You want the OpenVPN feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and OpenVPN 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 OpenVPN
OpenVPN A Secure tunneling daemon Copyright (C) 2002 2026 OpenVPN Inc. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. To get the latest release of OpenVPN, go to: To Build and Install, tar zxf openvpn .tar.gz cd openvpn ./configure make make install or see the file INSTALL for more info. For information on how to build OpenVPN on/for Windows with MinGW or MSVC see README.cmake.md. For detailed information on OpenVPN, including examples, see the man page For a sample VPN…
read the full OpenVPN overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or OpenVPN more popular?
caddy has 78,660 GitHub stars and OpenVPN has 14,763. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and OpenVPN free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0, and OpenVPN has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between caddy and OpenVPN?
caddy is written in Go and OpenVPN in C. 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 OpenVPN?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (78,660 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenVPN if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.