head to head · open source
frp vs gost
frp has 109,575 GitHub stars, 15,222 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. gost has 7,522 stars, 830 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped yesterday. frp leads on adoption by 1,357% (109,575 vs 7,522 stars). frp is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gost is written in Go under MIT. frp has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, gost 11%. gost 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
| frp | gost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 7.5K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 830 |
| 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 gost if
- You want the gost feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gost fits your workflow better
About frp
frp is a fast reverse proxy written in Go that exposes a local server behind a NAT or firewall to the internet, built for operators and developers who need inbound access to machines they cannot port forward.
About gost
gost, short for GO Simple Tunnel, is an MIT licensed tunnelling tool written in Go that unifies forward proxying, TCP/UDP port forwarding and reverse proxy tunnelling in a single binary, intended for network and infrastructure engineers who need to connect segmented networks, expose internal services, or route traffic through intermediaries without assembling several single purpose programs.
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Frequently asked questions
Is frp or gost more popular?
frp has 109,575 GitHub stars and gost has 7,522. frp has the larger community by that measure.
Are frp and gost free?
Both are open source. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gost under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frp and gost?
frp is written in Go and gost 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 gost?
Choose frp if you want the larger community (109,575 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gost if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.