head to head · open source
goproxy vs OpenVPN
goproxy has 17,145 GitHub stars, 3,090 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. OpenVPN has 14,761 stars, 3,424 forks, 226 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. goproxy leads on adoption by 16% (17,145 vs 14,761 stars). goproxy is written in Go under GPL-3.0; OpenVPN is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence. goproxy has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, OpenVPN 23%. OpenVPN 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
| goproxy | OpenVPN | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-08-17 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick goproxy if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenVPN if
- You want the OpenVPN feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and OpenVPN fits your workflow better
About goproxy
GOPROXY Introduction The GoProxy is a high performance http proxy, https proxy, socks5 proxy, ss proxy, websocket proxies, tcp proxies, udp proxies, game shield, game proxies. Support forward proxies, reverse proxy, transparent proxy, internet nat proxies, https proxy load balancing, http proxy load balancing , socks5 proxies load balancing, socket proxy load balancing, ss proxy load balancing, TCP / UDP port mapping, SSH transit, TLS encrypted transmission, protocol conversion, anti pollution DNS proxy, API authentication, speed limit, limit connection. Reverse proxies to help you expose a local server behind a…
read the full goproxy overview →
About OpenVPN
OpenVPN A Secure tunneling daemon Copyright (C) 2002 2026 OpenVPN Inc. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 as published by the Free Software Foundation. To get the latest release of OpenVPN, go to: To Build and Install, tar zxf openvpn .tar.gz cd openvpn ./configure make make install or see the file INSTALL for more info. For information on how to build OpenVPN on/for Windows with MinGW or MSVC see README.cmake.md. For detailed information on OpenVPN, including examples, see the man page For a sample VPN…
read the full OpenVPN overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is goproxy or OpenVPN more popular?
goproxy has 17,145 GitHub stars and OpenVPN has 14,761. goproxy has the larger community by that measure.
Are goproxy and OpenVPN free?
Both are open source. goproxy is licensed under GPL-3.0, and OpenVPN has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between goproxy and OpenVPN?
goproxy is written in Go and OpenVPN 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, goproxy or OpenVPN?
Choose goproxy if you want the larger community (17,145 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose OpenVPN if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.