head to head · open source
FireZone vs WireGuard
FireZone has 9,158 GitHub stars, 466 forks, 412 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WireGuard has 735 stars, 325 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. FireZone leads on adoption by 1,146% (9,158 vs 735 stars). FireZone is written in Elixir under Apache-2.0; WireGuard is written in C under GPL-2.0. FireZone has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, WireGuard 44%. FireZone 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
| FireZone | WireGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.2K | ★ 735 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Elixir | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 466 | ⑂ 325 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick FireZone if
- You weight community size — 9.2K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Elixir
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WireGuard if
- You want the WireGuard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and WireGuard fits your workflow better
About FireZone
Blazing fast remote access with identity based policies, attested device trust, and detailed audit logs Documentation Quickstart Download Clients Support Overview Firezone is a secure remote access platform built on WireGuard®. Connect users to private applications, databases, servers, and subnets with granular policies that define who can access each Resource and under what conditions. Combine identity based access with cryptographic device verification and detailed audit records. Gateways run in your infrastructure, and the full product source is available for inspection in this repository. Getting Started…
read the full FireZone overview →
About WireGuard
wireguard tools — tools for configuring WireGuard This supplies the main userspace tooling for using and configuring WireGuard tunnels, including the wg(8) and wg quick(8) utilities. This project supports Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and Android. More information may be found at WireGuard.com. Building $ cd src $ make There are no dependencies other than a good C compiler and a sane libc. Installing make install This command takes into account several environment variables: PREFIX default: /usr DESTDIR default: BINDIR default: $(PREFIX)/bin LIBDIR default: $(PREFIX)/lib MANDIR default…
read the full WireGuard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is FireZone or WireGuard more popular?
FireZone has 9,158 GitHub stars and WireGuard has 735. FireZone has the larger community by that measure.
Are FireZone and WireGuard free?
Both are open source. FireZone is licensed under Apache-2.0 and WireGuard under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between FireZone and WireGuard?
FireZone is written in Elixir and WireGuard 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, FireZone or WireGuard?
Choose FireZone if you want the larger community (9,158 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose WireGuard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.