head to head · open source
traefik vs netgoat
traefik has 65,343 GitHub stars, 6,264 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. netgoat has 902 stars, 50 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 7,144% (65,343 vs 902 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; netgoat is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, netgoat 6%. traefik 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 | netgoat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 902 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 netgoat if
- You want the netgoat 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 netgoat 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 netgoat
NetGoat agent NetGoat is a self hosted reverse proxy and traffic policy agent written in Go. It can run from a local YAML configuration, consume snapshots from the companion control plane, and continue serving the last known good configuration during an outage. [!WARNING] NetGoat is active alpha software ( v0.1.0 alpha.1 ; git tags going forward are v , see docs/release.md). The shipped configuration contains no routes. Review every upstream, use strong bootstrap credentials, and place administrative services behind authenticated TLS before exposing a deployment to the internet. Feature status This table is the…
read the full netgoat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or netgoat more popular?
traefik has 65,343 GitHub stars and netgoat has 902. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and netgoat free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and netgoat under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and netgoat?
traefik is written in Go and netgoat 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 netgoat?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,343 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose netgoat if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.