head to head · open source
cilium vs gofr
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars, 4,071 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr has 20,916 stars, 1,759 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 21% (25,232 vs 20,916 stars). cilium is written in Go under Apache-2.0; gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. cilium has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, gofr 8%. cilium 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
| cilium | gofr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 25K | ★ 21K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.1K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cilium if
- You weight community size — 25K 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 gofr if
- You want the gofr 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 gofr fits your workflow better
About cilium
Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution built on an eBPF based dataplane, written in Go and licensed under Apache 2.0. It lives in the Kubernetes ecosystem as a CNI implementation, and it is a CNCF project. At its foundation is eBPF, a Linux kernel technology that allows dynamic insertion of bytecode at integration points such as network IO, application sockets, and tracepoints, which is where Cilium implements its networking, security, and visibility logic. The project provides a flat Layer 3 network that can span multiple clusters in either native routing or overlay mode, and it is L7 proto…
read the full cilium overview →
About gofr
GoFr is an opinionated Go framework for building microservices, aimed at Go developers and platform teams who want HTTP, gRPC, data access and observability built in rather than assembled from separate libraries.
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or gofr more popular?
cilium has 25,232 GitHub stars and gofr has 20,916. cilium has the larger community by that measure.
Are cilium and gofr free?
Both are open source. cilium is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gofr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cilium and gofr?
cilium is written in Go and gofr 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, cilium or gofr?
Choose cilium if you want the larger community (25,232 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gofr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.