head to head · open source
OpenVPN vs pomerium
OpenVPN has 14,643 GitHub stars, 3,404 forks, 226 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pomerium has 5,027 stars, 359 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenVPN leads on adoption by 191% (14,643 vs 5,027 stars). OpenVPN is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence; pomerium is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenVPN has attracted 23% 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 (vpn), 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
| OpenVPN | pomerium | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 5.0K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-06 | 2026-10-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 359 |
| 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 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 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 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 OpenVPN or pomerium more popular?
OpenVPN has 14,643 GitHub stars and pomerium has 5,027. OpenVPN has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenVPN and pomerium free?
Both are open source. OpenVPN has no licence declared in this registry, and pomerium is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between OpenVPN and pomerium?
OpenVPN is written in C 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, OpenVPN or pomerium?
Choose OpenVPN if you want the larger community (14,643 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose pomerium if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.