head to head · open source
Pangolin vs WireGuard
Pangolin has 23,299 GitHub stars, 807 forks, 128 open issues and last shipped yesterday. WireGuard has 735 stars, 325 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Pangolin leads on adoption by 3,070% (23,299 vs 735 stars). Pangolin is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; WireGuard is written in C under GPL-2.0. Pangolin has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, WireGuard 44%. Pangolin 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
| Pangolin | WireGuard | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 735 |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 807 | ⑂ 325 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pangolin if
- You weight community size — 23K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WireGuard if
- You want the WireGuard feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and WireGuard fits your workflow better
About Pangolin
Website Documentation Contact Us Get started with Pangolin Cloud at app.pangolin.net Pangolin is an open source SASE platform, built on WireGuard®, with a simple mission: connect and protect your users, wherever they are. It brings networking and security together as one system including a zero trust VPN, zero trust reverse proxy, privileged access management, and an identity aware AI gateway, all sharing one identity and policy model. It's the same idea behind platforms like Cloudflare One, Zscaler, and Prisma but open, self hostable, and built to stay light and easy to deploy. Networking and security that's…
read the full Pangolin overview →
About WireGuard
wireguard tools — tools for configuring WireGuard This supplies the main userspace tooling for using and configuring WireGuard tunnels, including the wg(8) and wg quick(8) utilities. This project supports Linux, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, macOS, Windows, and Android. More information may be found at WireGuard.com. Building $ cd src $ make There are no dependencies other than a good C compiler and a sane libc. Installing make install This command takes into account several environment variables: PREFIX default: /usr DESTDIR default: BINDIR default: $(PREFIX)/bin LIBDIR default: $(PREFIX)/lib MANDIR default…
read the full WireGuard overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pangolin or WireGuard more popular?
Pangolin has 23,299 GitHub stars and WireGuard has 735. Pangolin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pangolin and WireGuard free?
Both are open source. Pangolin has no licence declared in this registry, and WireGuard is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Pangolin and WireGuard?
Pangolin is written in TypeScript and WireGuard 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, Pangolin or WireGuard?
Choose Pangolin if you want the larger community (23,299 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose WireGuard if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.