head to head · open source
goproxy vs pomerium
goproxy has 17,138 GitHub stars, 3,094 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. pomerium has 5,027 stars, 359 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goproxy leads on adoption by 241% (17,138 vs 5,027 stars). goproxy is written in Go under GPL-3.0; pomerium is written in Go under Apache-2.0. goproxy has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, pomerium 7%. pomerium 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
| goproxy | pomerium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-08-17 | 2026-10-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 359 |
| 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 pomerium if
- You want the pomerium 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 pomerium fits your workflow better
About goproxy
goproxy is a GPL 3.0 licensed, Go based proxy server that provides HTTP(S), SOCKS5, ss, WebSocket, TCP and UDP proxying from a single program, intended for operators and developers who need forward, reverse, transparent, chained and NAT traversal proxying without wiring together several separate tools.
read the full goproxy overview →
About pomerium
Pomerium is an identity and context aware access proxy, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 licence, that builds secure, clientless connections to internal web applications and other services without a corporate VPN.
read the full pomerium overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is goproxy or pomerium more popular?
goproxy has 17,138 GitHub stars and pomerium has 5,027. goproxy has the larger community by that measure.
Are goproxy and pomerium free?
Both are open source. goproxy is licensed under GPL-3.0 and pomerium under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between goproxy and pomerium?
goproxy is written in Go and pomerium 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, goproxy or pomerium?
Choose goproxy if you want the larger community (17,138 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pomerium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.