head to head · open source
SafeLine vs optillm
SafeLine has 22,638 GitHub stars, 1,535 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped yesterday. optillm has 4,296 stars, 388 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. SafeLine leads on adoption by 427% (22,638 vs 4,296 stars). SafeLine is written in Go under GPL-3.0; optillm is written in Python under Apache-2.0. SafeLine has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, optillm 9%. SafeLine was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (api-gateway), 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
| SafeLine | optillm | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 388 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SafeLine if
- You weight community size — 23K 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 optillm if
- You want the optillm feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and optillm fits your workflow better
About SafeLine
SafeLine is a self hosted web application firewall and reverse proxy, written in Go and licensed under GPL 3.0, that filters, monitors, and blocks malicious HTTP/S traffic before it reaches a web application — built for developers, AppSec engineers, and blue teams who want to run edge protection on their own infrastructure.
read the full SafeLine overview →
About optillm
OptiLLM is a Python project that provides an optimizing inference proxy for large language models. It exposes an OpenAI API compatible endpoint and sits between an application and model providers, allowing callers to request reasoning oriented optimizations without changing model weights or adding training. The project lives in the developer tools and API development ecosystem, and its topics connect it to agents, agentic workflows, API gateways, chain of thought prompting, and generative AI inference.
read the full optillm overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SafeLine or optillm more popular?
SafeLine has 22,638 GitHub stars and optillm has 4,296. SafeLine has the larger community by that measure.
Are SafeLine and optillm free?
Both are open source. SafeLine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and optillm under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SafeLine and optillm?
SafeLine is written in Go and optillm in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, SafeLine or optillm?
Choose SafeLine if you want the larger community (22,638 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose optillm if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.