head to head · open source
traefik vs trickster
traefik has 65,066 GitHub stars, 6,224 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. trickster has 2,092 stars, 190 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. traefik leads on adoption by 3,010% (65,066 vs 2,092 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; trickster is written in Go under Apache-2.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, trickster 9%. trickster was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (kubernetes), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| traefik | trickster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 trickster if
- You want the trickster feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and trickster 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 trickster
Trickster is an open source Go HTTP reverse proxy cache and time series database query accelerator for operators who want faster dashboards and a hardened edge in front of HTTP services.
read the full trickster overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or trickster more popular?
traefik has 65,066 GitHub stars and trickster has 2,092. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and trickster free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and trickster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and trickster?
traefik is written in Go and trickster 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 trickster?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,066 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose trickster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.