head to head · open source
traefik vs awl
traefik has 64,957 GitHub stars, 6,205 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. awl has 684 stars, 45 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 9,397% (64,957 vs 684 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; awl is written in Go under MPL-2.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, awl 7%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (golang), 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 | awl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 684 |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 45 |
| 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 awl if
- You want the awl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and awl 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 awl
awl (Anywherelan) is an open source, fully peer to peer mesh VPN written in Go that gives your own devices stable .awl addresses so they can reach one another at the IP level from anywhere, aimed at self hosters, small groups of friends and personal device fleets of roughly tens of machines rather than at teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or awl more popular?
traefik has 64,957 GitHub stars and awl has 684. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and awl free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and awl under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and awl?
traefik is written in Go and awl 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 awl?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,957 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose awl if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.