head to head · open source
cilium vs gofr
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars, 4,207 forks, 1,085 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gofr has 20,820 stars, 1,789 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cilium leads on adoption by 24% (25,759 vs 20,820 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 9%. 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 | ★ 26K | ★ 21K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cilium if
- You weight community size — 26K 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
.. raw:: html Cilium is a networking, observability, and security solution with an eBPF based dataplane. It provides a simple flat Layer 3 network with the ability to span multiple clusters in either a native routing or overlay mode. It is L7 protocol aware and can enforce network policies on L3 L7 using an identity based security model that is decoupled from network addressing. Cilium implements distributed load balancing for traffic between pods and to external services, and is able to fully replace kube proxy, using efficient hash tables in eBPF, allowing for almost unlimited scale. It also supports advanced…
read the full cilium overview →
About gofr
Go Fr GoFr: An Opinionated Microservice Development Framework Listed in the CNCF Landscape 🎯 Goal GoFr is designed to simplify microservice development , with a key focus on Kubernetes deployment and out of the box observability . While capable of building generic applications, microservices remain at its core. 💡 Key Features 1. Simple API Syntax 2. REST Standards by Default 3. Configuration Management 4. Observability (Logs, Traces, Metrics) 5. Inbuilt Auth Middleware & Custom Middleware Support 6. gRPC Support 7. HTTP Service with Circuit Breaker Support 8. Pub/Sub 9. Health Check for All Datasources 10…
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Frequently asked questions
Is cilium or gofr more popular?
cilium has 25,759 GitHub stars and gofr has 20,820. 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 (25,759 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.