head to head · open source
traefik vs docktail
traefik has 65,243 GitHub stars, 6,255 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. docktail has 1,282 stars, 48 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 4,989% (65,243 vs 1,282 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; docktail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, docktail 4%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (docker, 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 | docktail | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-15 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 48 |
| 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 docktail if
- You want the docktail feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and docktail 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 docktail
DockTail is an AGPL 3.0, Go based tool that watches Docker containers, reads their docktail. labels, and exposes matching containers as native Tailscale Services, for self hosters and infrastructure teams that want tailnet reachable services without a Tailscale device per application.
read the full docktail overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or docktail more popular?
traefik has 65,243 GitHub stars and docktail has 1,282. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and docktail free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and docktail under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and docktail?
traefik is written in Go and docktail 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 docktail?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,243 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose docktail if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.