head to head · open source
traefik vs acme-dns
traefik has 64,957 GitHub stars, 6,205 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. acme-dns has 2,832 stars, 304 forks, 192 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. traefik leads on adoption by 2,194% (64,957 vs 2,832 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; acme-dns is written in Go under MIT. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, acme-dns 11%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (letsencrypt), 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
| traefik | acme-dns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-06-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 304 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick traefik if
- You weight community size — 65K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick acme-dns if
- You want the acme-dns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and acme-dns fits your workflow better
About traefik
Traefik — pronounced traffic — is "The Cloud Native Application Proxy": an MIT licensed, Go based HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that watches your orchestrator or service registry and generates its own routes, aimed at teams running microservices on Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Rancher v2, or Amazon ECS.
read the full traefik overview →
About acme-dns
acme dns is a limited, self hosted DNS server written in Go that exposes a RESTful HTTP API for updating TXT records, letting operators automate ACME DNS 01 challenges without handing broad DNS control to their automation.
read the full acme-dns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or acme-dns more popular?
traefik has 64,957 GitHub stars and acme-dns has 2,832. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and acme-dns free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and acme-dns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and acme-dns?
traefik is written in Go and acme-dns 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, traefik or acme-dns?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,957 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose acme-dns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.