head to head · open source
traefik vs pivpn
traefik has 64,904 GitHub stars, 6,202 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pivpn has 8,043 stars, 682 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 707% (64,904 vs 8,043 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; pivpn is written in Shell under MIT. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, pivpn 8%. 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 | pivpn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 8.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 682 |
| 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 pivpn if
- You want the pivpn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and pivpn 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 pivpn
PiVPN is a set of open source shell scripts that turns a Raspberry Pi, or an Ubuntu or Debian server, into a self hosted VPN server running WireGuard or OpenVPN, and it is built for people who want a cost effective personal VPN at home without having to become a networking expert.
read the full pivpn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or pivpn more popular?
traefik has 64,904 GitHub stars and pivpn has 8,043. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and pivpn free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and pivpn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and pivpn?
traefik is written in Go and pivpn in Shell. 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 pivpn?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,904 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pivpn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.