head to head · open source
OpenVPN vs coredns
OpenVPN has 14,643 GitHub stars, 3,404 forks, 226 open issues and last shipped yesterday. coredns has 14,361 stars, 2,539 forks, 282 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenVPN leads on adoption by 2% (14,643 vs 14,361 stars). OpenVPN is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence; coredns is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenVPN has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, coredns 18%. 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
| OpenVPN | coredns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 14K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenVPN if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick coredns if
- You want the coredns 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 coredns fits your workflow better
About OpenVPN
OpenVPN is open source VPN daemon. It provides secure tunneling for network connections. Project lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Networking & Connectivity ecosystem. Tagline says Zero Trust VPN solutions for secure business networking. GitHub description says OpenVPN is an open source VPN daemon. Repository language is C. GitHub license field says NOASSERTION, while README states GNU General Public License version 2. README states copyright 2002 2026 OpenVPN Inc.
read the full OpenVPN overview →
About coredns
CoreDNS is a CNCF graduated DNS server and forwarder written in Go that resolves queries through a chain of plugins, aimed at platform and infrastructure engineers who run DNS for Kubernetes clusters, service discovery, or authoritative zones and need to extend its behaviour without forking the core.
read the full coredns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenVPN or coredns more popular?
OpenVPN has 14,643 GitHub stars and coredns has 14,361. OpenVPN has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenVPN and coredns free?
Both are open source. OpenVPN has no licence declared in this registry, and coredns is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between OpenVPN and coredns?
OpenVPN is written in C and coredns 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, OpenVPN or coredns?
Choose OpenVPN if you want the larger community (14,643 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose coredns if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.