head to head · open source
SafeLine vs xh
SafeLine has 23,154 GitHub stars, 1,592 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. xh has 8,165 stars, 152 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. SafeLine leads on adoption by 184% (23,154 vs 8,165 stars). SafeLine is written in Go under GPL-3.0; xh is written in Rust under MIT. SafeLine has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, xh 2%. xh 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
| SafeLine | xh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 23K | ★ 8.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-22 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.6K | ⑂ 152 |
| 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 xh if
- You want the xh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xh 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 xh
xh xh is a friendly and fast tool for sending HTTP requests. It reimplements as much as possible of HTTPie's excellent design, with a focus on improved performance. Installation via cURL (Linux & macOS) via Powershell (Windows) via a package manager \ Make sure that you have Rust 1.85 or later installed \ \ You will need to install the MMRL CLI \ \ \ Built with native tls only. \ \ \ \ Available since Debian 13 and Ubuntu 25.04. Built with native tls only. \ \ \ \ \ Enable COPR repo via sudo dnf copr enable ducaale/xh [Huber]: [Mise]: [Magisk]: [KernelSU]: [Termux]: [Flox]: [Hermit]: via pre built binaries The…
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Frequently asked questions
Is SafeLine or xh more popular?
SafeLine has 23,154 GitHub stars and xh has 8,165. SafeLine has the larger community by that measure.
Are SafeLine and xh free?
Both are open source. SafeLine is licensed under GPL-3.0 and xh under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SafeLine and xh?
SafeLine is written in Go and xh in Rust. 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 xh?
Choose SafeLine if you want the larger community (23,154 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose xh if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.