head to head · open source
traefik vs smartdns
traefik has 64,895 GitHub stars, 6,201 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. smartdns has 11,312 stars, 1,247 forks, 320 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 474% (64,895 vs 11,312 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; smartdns is written in C under GPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, smartdns 11%. 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 | smartdns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 smartdns if
- You want the smartdns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and smartdns 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 smartdns
SmartDNS is a local DNS server, written in C and licensed under GPL 3.0, that accepts DNS queries from local clients, asks multiple upstream DNS servers, and returns the IP address with the fastest measured access speed — built for self hosters, router owners, and network operators who want faster name resolution and stronger privacy.
read the full smartdns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or smartdns more popular?
traefik has 64,895 GitHub stars and smartdns has 11,312. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and smartdns free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and smartdns under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and smartdns?
traefik is written in Go and smartdns 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 smartdns?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,895 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose smartdns if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.