head to head · open source
frp vs tengine
frp has 109,545 GitHub stars, 15,219 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. tengine has 13,371 stars, 2,502 forks, 502 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. frp leads on adoption by 719% (109,545 vs 13,371 stars). frp is written in Go under Apache-2.0; tengine is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. frp has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, tengine 19%. 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 | tengine | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 13K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-15 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 tengine if
- You want the tengine feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and tengine 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 tengine
Tengine is a high performance, BSD 2 Clause licensed web server and reverse proxy that is 100% compatible with nginx, built for operators and platform teams that need HTTP/3, Kubernetes Ingress support, dynamic configuration and Chinese cryptographic standards without abandoning their existing nginx configuration.
read the full tengine overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is frp or tengine more popular?
frp has 109,545 GitHub stars and tengine has 13,371. frp has the larger community by that measure.
Are frp and tengine free?
Both are open source. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and tengine under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frp and tengine?
frp is written in Go and tengine 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, frp or tengine?
Choose frp if you want the larger community (109,545 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose tengine if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.