head to head · open source
traefik vs gravity
traefik has 65,049 GitHub stars, 6,220 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gravity has 930 stars, 31 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. traefik leads on adoption by 6,895% (65,049 vs 930 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; gravity is written in Go under GPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, gravity 3%. gravity was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (etcd), 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 | gravity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 930 |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 31 |
| 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 gravity if
- You want the gravity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gravity 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 gravity
Gravity is a fully replicated DNS, DHCP and TFTP server with ad blocking, written in Go and backed by etcd, for self hosters and network operators who want name and address services that stay consistent across a cluster.
read the full gravity overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or gravity more popular?
traefik has 65,049 GitHub stars and gravity has 930. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and gravity free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and gravity under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and gravity?
traefik is written in Go and gravity 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 gravity?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,049 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose gravity if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.