head to head · open source
SafeLine vs higress
SafeLine has 22,606 GitHub stars, 1,533 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. higress has 9,397 stars, 1,304 forks, 1,114 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. SafeLine leads on adoption by 141% (22,606 vs 9,397 stars). SafeLine is written in Go under GPL-3.0; higress is written in Go under Apache-2.0. SafeLine has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, higress 14%. higress 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 | higress | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-10 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 higress if
- You want the higress 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 higress 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 higress
Higress is a cloud native, AI native API gateway built on Istio and Envoy that targets platform engineering and AI infrastructure teams who need to route LLM API traffic and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers through a single extensible, self hosted gateway.
read the full higress overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SafeLine or higress more popular?
SafeLine has 22,606 GitHub stars and higress has 9,397. SafeLine has the larger community by that measure.
Are SafeLine and higress free?
Both are open source. SafeLine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and higress under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SafeLine and higress?
SafeLine is written in Go and higress 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, SafeLine or higress?
Choose SafeLine if you want the larger community (22,606 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose higress if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.