head to head · open source
traefik vs nginx-proxy
traefik has 65,442 GitHub stars, 6,318 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nginx-proxy has 19,933 stars, 3,037 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 228% (65,442 vs 19,933 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; nginx-proxy is written in Python under MIT. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, nginx-proxy 15%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (docker), 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 | nginx-proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| 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 nginx-proxy if
- You want the nginx-proxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and nginx-proxy 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 nginx-proxy
nginx proxy nginx proxy sets up a container running nginx and docker gen. docker gen generates reverse proxy configs for nginx and reloads nginx when containers are started and stopped. See Automated Nginx Reverse Proxy for Docker for why you might want to use this. Usage To run it: Then start any containers (here an nginx container) you want proxied with an env var VIRTUAL HOST=subdomain.yourdomain.com Provided your DNS is setup to resolve foo.bar.com to the host running nginx proxy, a request to will then be routed to a container with the VIRTUAL HOST env var set to foo.bar.com (in this case, the your proxied…
read the full nginx-proxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or nginx-proxy more popular?
traefik has 65,442 GitHub stars and nginx-proxy has 19,933. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and nginx-proxy free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and nginx-proxy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and nginx-proxy?
traefik is written in Go and nginx-proxy in Python. 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 nginx-proxy?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,442 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose nginx-proxy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.