head to head · open source
traefik vs sshpiper
traefik has 65,201 GitHub stars, 6,245 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sshpiper has 1,331 stars, 170 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped today. traefik leads on adoption by 4,799% (65,201 vs 1,331 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; sshpiper is written in Go under MIT. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, sshpiper 13%. sshpiper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (golang, reverse-proxy), 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 | sshpiper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-13 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 sshpiper if
- You want the sshpiper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sshpiper 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 sshpiper
sshpiper is a Go reverse proxy for sshd that routes SSH, SCP and port forwarding sessions from a downstream client to upstream SSH servers, built for operators who want a bastion layer they control sitting in front of existing hosts.
read the full sshpiper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or sshpiper more popular?
traefik has 65,201 GitHub stars and sshpiper has 1,331. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and sshpiper free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and sshpiper under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and sshpiper?
traefik is written in Go and sshpiper 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 sshpiper?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,201 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sshpiper if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.