head to head · open source
frp vs bfe
frp has 110,470 GitHub stars, 15,301 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. bfe has 6,272 stars, 949 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. frp leads on adoption by 1,661% (110,470 vs 6,272 stars). frp is written in Go under Apache-2.0; bfe is written in Go under Apache-2.0. frp has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, bfe 15%. frp 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| frp | bfe | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 6.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 949 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick frp if
- You weight community size — 110K 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 bfe if
- You want the bfe 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 bfe fits your workflow better
About frp
frp README 中文文档 Sponsors frp is an open source project with its ongoing development made possible entirely by the support of our awesome sponsors. If you'd like to join them, please consider sponsoring frp's development. Gold Sponsors High performance residential and ISP proxies for developers 90M+ residential IPs worldwide. Rotating IPs, sticky sessions, and traffic that never expires. From $0.55/GB. Use RAPID10 for 10% off. Try it for free. The complete IDE crafted for professional Go developers The sovereign cloud that puts you in control An open source, self hosted alternative to public clouds, built for…
About bfe
BFE English 中文 BFE (Beyond Front End) is a modern layer 7 load balancer from baidu. BFE is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) sandbox project. Introduction BFE opensource project includes several components, which can be used together as a integrated layer 7 load balancer and traffic management solution. BFE system consists of data plane and control plane: Data plane：responsible for forwarding user's traffic, including below component: BFE Server：BFE forward engine (this repository, bfenetworks/bfe). BFE Server performs content based routing, load balancing and forwards the traffic to backend servers…
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is frp or bfe more popular?
frp has 110,470 GitHub stars and bfe has 6,272. frp has the larger community by that measure.
Are frp and bfe free?
Both are open source. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bfe under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frp and bfe?
frp is written in Go and bfe 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, frp or bfe?
Choose frp if you want the larger community (110,470 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bfe if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.