head to head · open source
traefik vs bind9
traefik has 65,066 GitHub stars, 6,224 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. bind9 has 779 stars, 186 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped today. traefik leads on adoption by 8,253% (65,066 vs 779 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; bind9 is written in C under MPL-2.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, bind9 24%. bind9 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
| traefik | bind9 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 779 |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-10-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 186 |
| 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 bind9 if
- You want the bind9 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and bind9 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 bind9
BIND 9 is a complete, highly portable open source implementation of the Domain Name System protocol, written in C, for operators and organisations that need to run authoritative, recursive, or forwarding DNS infrastructure themselves.
read the full bind9 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or bind9 more popular?
traefik has 65,066 GitHub stars and bind9 has 779. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and bind9 free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and bind9 under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and bind9?
traefik is written in Go and bind9 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, traefik or bind9?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,066 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose bind9 if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.