head to head · open source
cloudflared vs pomerium
cloudflared has 16,043 GitHub stars, 1,468 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pomerium has 5,027 stars, 359 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cloudflared leads on adoption by 219% (16,043 vs 5,027 stars). cloudflared is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pomerium is written in Go under Apache-2.0. cloudflared has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, pomerium 7%. pomerium was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| cloudflared | pomerium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-05 | 2026-10-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 359 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cloudflared if
- You weight community size — 16K 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 pomerium if
- You want the pomerium 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 pomerium fits your workflow better
About cloudflared
cloudflared is the open source command line client and tunneling daemon for Cloudflare Tunnel, a Go program under the Apache 2.0 licence that proxies traffic from the Cloudflare network to your origins so a webserver can stay closed to the public internet, and it is aimed at operators, platform teams and developers who need to publish HTTP services or reach private origins without opening inbound firewall ports.
read the full cloudflared overview →
About pomerium
Pomerium is an identity and context aware access proxy, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, that builds secure, clientless connections to internal web applications and other services without a corporate VPN.
read the full pomerium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cloudflared or pomerium more popular?
cloudflared has 16,043 GitHub stars and pomerium has 5,027. cloudflared has the larger community by that measure.
Are cloudflared and pomerium free?
Both are open source. cloudflared is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pomerium under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cloudflared and pomerium?
cloudflared is written in Go and pomerium 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, cloudflared or pomerium?
Choose cloudflared if you want the larger community (16,043 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pomerium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.