head to head · open source
frp vs netgoat
frp has 110,101 GitHub stars, 15,255 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. netgoat has 902 stars, 50 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. frp leads on adoption by 12,106% (110,101 vs 902 stars). frp is written in Go under Apache-2.0; netgoat is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. frp has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, netgoat 6%. 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.
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Side by side
| frp | netgoat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 902 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 netgoat if
- You want the netgoat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and netgoat 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 netgoat
NetGoat agent NetGoat is a self hosted reverse proxy and traffic policy agent written in Go. It can run from a local YAML configuration, consume snapshots from the companion control plane, and continue serving the last known good configuration during an outage. [!WARNING] NetGoat is active alpha software ( v0.1.0 alpha.1 ; git tags going forward are v , see docs/release.md). The shipped configuration contains no routes. Review every upstream, use strong bootstrap credentials, and place administrative services behind authenticated TLS before exposing a deployment to the internet. Feature status This table is the…
read the full netgoat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is frp or netgoat more popular?
frp has 110,101 GitHub stars and netgoat has 902. frp has the larger community by that measure.
Are frp and netgoat free?
Both are open source. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and netgoat under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frp and netgoat?
frp is written in Go and netgoat 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 netgoat?
Choose frp if you want the larger community (110,101 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose netgoat if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.