head to head · open source
traefik vs node
traefik has 64,942 GitHub stars, 6,201 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. node has 1,354 stars, 355 forks, 80 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 4,696% (64,942 vs 1,354 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; node is written in Go under GPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, node 26%. traefik was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | node | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 355 |
| 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 node if
- You want the node 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 node 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 node
Mysterium Node is the official Go implementation of the Mysterium Network distributed VPN (dVPN) protocol, a cross platform package for operators who want to run a node on that network and for developers who want to build clients against it.
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or node more popular?
traefik has 64,942 GitHub stars and node has 1,354. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and node free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and node under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and node?
traefik is written in Go and node 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 node?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,942 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose node if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.