head to head · open source
traefik vs OpenVPN
traefik has 64,895 GitHub stars, 6,201 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenVPN has 14,569 stars, 3,401 forks, 226 open issues and last shipped yesterday. traefik leads on adoption by 345% (64,895 vs 14,569 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; OpenVPN is written in C under a custom or non-standard licence. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, OpenVPN 23%. OpenVPN 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 | OpenVPN | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 15K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| 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 OpenVPN if
- You want the OpenVPN feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and OpenVPN 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 OpenVPN
OpenVPN is open source VPN daemon. It provides secure tunneling for network connections. Project lives in Infrastructure & Operations / Networking & Connectivity ecosystem. Tagline says Zero Trust VPN solutions for secure business networking. GitHub description says OpenVPN is an open source VPN daemon. Repository language is C. GitHub license field says NOASSERTION, while README states GNU General Public License version 2. README states copyright 2002 2026 OpenVPN Inc.
read the full OpenVPN overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or OpenVPN more popular?
traefik has 64,895 GitHub stars and OpenVPN has 14,569. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and OpenVPN free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT, and OpenVPN has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between traefik and OpenVPN?
traefik is written in Go and OpenVPN in C. 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 OpenVPN?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,895 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenVPN if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.