head to head · open source
Tailcall vs CliRelay
Tailcall has 7,633 GitHub stars, 1,456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. CliRelay has 1,047 stars, 132 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Tailcall leads on adoption by 629% (7,633 vs 1,047 stars). Tailcall is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; CliRelay is written in Go under MIT. Tailcall has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, CliRelay 13%. Tailcall was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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
| Tailcall | CliRelay | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 132 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tailcall if
- You weight community size — 7.6K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick CliRelay if
- You want the CliRelay feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and CliRelay fits your workflow better
About Tailcall
⚒️ Forge: AI Enhanced Terminal Development Environment A comprehensive coding agent that integrates AI capabilities with your development environment curl fsSL sh Table of Contents Quickstart Usage Examples Why Forge? How Forge Works: Three Modes Interactive Mode (TUI) One Shot CLI Mode ZSH Plugin Mode ( : prefix) ZSH Plugin: The : Prefix System Agents Sending Prompts Attaching Files Conversation Management Git Integration Shell Command Tools Session & Configuration Skills Customizing Agent Behavior Semantic Search (Workspace) Quick Reference: All : Commands Command Line Options Advanced Configuration Provider…
read the full Tailcall overview →
About CliRelay
🔀 CliRelay A unified proxy server for AI CLI tools — use your existing subscriptions with any OpenAI / Gemini / Claude / Codex compatible client. Multi tenant web panel · request logs & quotas · routing groups & failover · self hosted English 中文 📖 Docs · 🖥️ Management Panel · 🐛 Report Bug · ✨ Request Feature ⚡ What is CliRelay? ✨ Heavily enhanced fork of the CLIProxyAPI project — rebuilt with a production grade management layer, web control panel hosting, and a terminal TUI for day 2 operations. CliRelay turns AI CLI subscriptions, OAuth credentials, API keys, and compatible upstream services into one…
read the full CliRelay overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tailcall or CliRelay more popular?
Tailcall has 7,633 GitHub stars and CliRelay has 1,047. Tailcall has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailcall and CliRelay free?
Both are open source. Tailcall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and CliRelay under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailcall and CliRelay?
Tailcall is written in Rust and CliRelay 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, Tailcall or CliRelay?
Choose Tailcall if you want the larger community (7,633 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose CliRelay if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.