head to head · open source
traefik vs nginx
traefik has 65,442 GitHub stars, 6,318 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx has 32,033 stars, 8,410 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 104% (65,442 vs 32,033 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, nginx 26%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (load-balancer), 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
| traefik | nginx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 32K |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 8.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick traefik if
- You weight community size — 65K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nginx if
- You want the nginx 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 nginx fits your workflow better
About traefik
Traefik (pronounced traffic ) is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components (Docker, Swarm mode, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Rancher v2, Amazon ECS, ...) and configures itself automatically and dynamically. Pointing Traefik at your orchestrator should be the only configuration step you need. . Overview . Features . Supported backends . Quickstart . Web UI . Documentation . . Support . Release cycle . Contributing . Maintainers . Credits . :warning: When migrating to a new major version of Traefik, please…
read the full traefik overview →
About nginx
NGINX (pronounced "engine x" or "en jin eks") is the world's most popular Web Server, high performance Load Balancer, Reverse Proxy, API Gateway and Content Cache. NGINX is free and open source software, distributed under the terms of a simplified 2 clause BSD like license. Enterprise distributions, commercial support and training are available from F5, Inc. [!IMPORTANT] The goal of this README is to provide a basic, structured introduction to NGINX for novice users. Please refer to the full NGINX documentation for detailed information on installing, building, configuring, debugging, and more. These…
read the full nginx overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or nginx more popular?
traefik has 65,442 GitHub stars and nginx has 32,033. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and nginx free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and nginx under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and nginx?
traefik is written in Go and nginx 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, traefik or nginx?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,442 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nginx if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.