head to head · open source
caddy vs sdns
caddy has 79,049 GitHub stars, 5,266 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sdns has 1,089 stars, 75 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. caddy leads on adoption by 7,159% (79,049 vs 1,089 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; sdns is written in Go under MIT. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, sdns 7%. caddy 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 | sdns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-14 | 2026-11-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.3K | ⑂ 75 |
| 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 sdns if
- You want the sdns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sdns 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 sdns
SDNS A recursive DNS resolver with DNSSEC validation, written in Go. Documentation · Install · Configuration · Benchmarks SDNS resolves from the root, validates answers against the DNSSEC trust anchors, and caches them. It serves DNS over TLS, HTTPS and QUIC alongside plain UDP and TCP, and answers warm cache hits from the bytes it already holds. Full documentation lives at sdns.dev . This file covers installing it and getting a first answer out of it. Install Pre built binaries for Linux, macOS, Windows and the BSDs, plus .deb and .rpm packages, are on the releases page. The full architecture matrix is in the…
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or sdns more popular?
caddy has 79,049 GitHub stars and sdns has 1,089. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and sdns free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sdns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caddy and sdns?
caddy is written in Go and sdns 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 sdns?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (79,049 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sdns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.