head to head · open source
traefik vs cloudflared
traefik has 65,469 GitHub stars, 6,306 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. cloudflared has 16,443 stars, 1,518 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 298% (65,469 vs 16,443 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; cloudflared is written in Go under Apache-2.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cloudflared 9%. cloudflared 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 | cloudflared | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 16K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 cloudflared if
- You want the cloudflared feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cloudflared fits your workflow better
About traefik
Traefik (pronounced traffic ) is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components (Docker, Swarm mode, Kubernetes, Consul, Etcd, Rancher v2, Amazon ECS, ...) and configures itself automatically and dynamically. Pointing Traefik at your orchestrator should be the only configuration step you need. . Overview . Features . Supported backends . Quickstart . Web UI . Documentation . . Support . Release cycle . Contributing . Maintainers . Credits . :warning: When migrating to a new major version of Traefik, please…
read the full traefik overview →
About cloudflared
Cloudflare Tunnel client Contains the command line client for Cloudflare Tunnel, a tunneling daemon that proxies traffic from the Cloudflare network to your origins. This daemon sits between Cloudflare network and your origin (e.g. a webserver). Cloudflare attracts client requests and sends them to you via this daemon, without requiring you to poke holes on your firewall your origin can remain as closed as possible. Extensive documentation can be found in the Cloudflare Tunnel section of the Cloudflare Docs. All usages related with proxying to your origins are available under cloudflared tunnel help . You can…
read the full cloudflared overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or cloudflared more popular?
traefik has 65,469 GitHub stars and cloudflared has 16,443. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and cloudflared free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and cloudflared under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and cloudflared?
traefik is written in Go and cloudflared 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 cloudflared?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,469 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cloudflared if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.