head to head · open source
caddy vs tengine
caddy has 75,951 GitHub stars, 4,988 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tengine has 13,371 stars, 2,502 forks, 502 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. caddy leads on adoption by 468% (75,951 vs 13,371 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tengine is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, tengine 19%. caddy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (http3, 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 | tengine | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 tengine if
- You want the tengine feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and tengine 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 tengine
Tengine is a high performance, BSD 2 Clause licensed web server and reverse proxy that is 100% compatible with nginx, built for operators and platform teams that need HTTP/3, Kubernetes Ingress support, dynamic configuration and Chinese cryptographic standards without abandoning their existing nginx configuration.
read the full tengine overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or tengine more popular?
caddy has 75,951 GitHub stars and tengine has 13,371. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and tengine free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tengine under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caddy and tengine?
caddy is written in Go and tengine 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 tengine?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (75,951 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tengine if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.