head to head · open source
traefik vs SoftEtherVPN
traefik has 64,898 GitHub stars, 6,201 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. SoftEtherVPN has 13,562 stars, 2,781 forks, 296 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. traefik leads on adoption by 379% (64,898 vs 13,562 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; SoftEtherVPN is written in C under Apache-2.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, SoftEtherVPN 21%. 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 | SoftEtherVPN | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 14K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 2.8K |
| 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 SoftEtherVPN if
- You want the SoftEtherVPN feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and SoftEtherVPN 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 SoftEtherVPN
SoftEther VPN is an open source, cross platform, multi protocol VPN server and client, written in C and licensed under Apache 2.0, intended for administrators and self hosters who need one program to serve many VPN protocols instead of running several separate daemons.
read the full SoftEtherVPN overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or SoftEtherVPN more popular?
traefik has 64,898 GitHub stars and SoftEtherVPN has 13,562. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and SoftEtherVPN free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and SoftEtherVPN under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and SoftEtherVPN?
traefik is written in Go and SoftEtherVPN 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 SoftEtherVPN?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (64,898 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose SoftEtherVPN if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.