head to head · open source
SafeLine vs Ocelot
SafeLine has 23,154 GitHub stars, 1,592 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. Ocelot has 8,718 stars, 1,680 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. SafeLine leads on adoption by 166% (23,154 vs 8,718 stars). SafeLine is written in Go under GPL-3.0; Ocelot is written in C# under MIT. SafeLine has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Ocelot 19%. Ocelot 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 | Ocelot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 8.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C# |
| Last push | 2026-10-22 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 1.7K |
| 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 Ocelot if
- You want the Ocelot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Ocelot fits your workflow better
About SafeLine
SafeLine Make your web apps secure 🏠 Website 📖 Docs 🔍 Live Demo 🙋♂️ Discord 中文版 🏆 Achievements 👋 INTRODUCTION SafeLine is a self hosted WAF(Web Application Firewall) to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits. A web application firewall helps protect web apps by filtering and monitoring HTTP traffic between a web application and the Internet. It typically protects web apps from attacks such as SQL injection , XSS , code injection , os command injection , CRLF injection , ldap injection , xpath injection , RCE , XXE , SSRF , path traversal , backdoor , bruteforce , http flood , bot abused , among…
read the full SafeLine overview →
About Ocelot
[ docspassing]: [ docsfailing]: About Ocelot is a .NET API gateway. This project is aimed at people using .NET running a microservices (service oriented) architecture that needs a unified point of entry into their system. However, it will work with anything that speaks HTTP(S) and runs on any platform that ASP.NET Core supports. Ocelot consists of a series of ASP.NET Core middlewares arranged in a specific order. Ocelot custom middlewares manipulate the HttpRequest object into a state specified by its configuration until it reaches a request builder middleware, where it creates a HttpRequestMessage object, which…
read the full Ocelot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is SafeLine or Ocelot more popular?
SafeLine has 23,154 GitHub stars and Ocelot has 8,718. SafeLine has the larger community by that measure.
Are SafeLine and Ocelot free?
Both are open source. SafeLine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Ocelot under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SafeLine and Ocelot?
SafeLine is written in Go and Ocelot 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, SafeLine or Ocelot?
Choose SafeLine if you want the larger community (23,154 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Ocelot if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.