head to head · open source
traefik vs vulcain
traefik has 65,003 GitHub stars, 6,209 forks, 939 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vulcain has 3,595 stars, 103 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. traefik leads on adoption by 1,708% (65,003 vs 3,595 stars). traefik is written in Go under MIT; vulcain is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. traefik has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, vulcain 3%. 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 | vulcain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 65K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-28 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 103 |
| 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 vulcain if
- You want the vulcain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and vulcain 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 vulcain
Vulcain is an open source protocol and gateway server, written in Go and released under AGPL 3.0, that turns any existing web API into a client driven REST API by using Preload hints and the 103 Early Hints status code; it is intended for API developers and platform teams who want precise control over which related resources a client fetches without abandoning REST, HTTP caching, or their existing HTTP infrastructure.
read the full vulcain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is traefik or vulcain more popular?
traefik has 65,003 GitHub stars and vulcain has 3,595. traefik has the larger community by that measure.
Are traefik and vulcain free?
Both are open source. traefik is licensed under MIT and vulcain under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between traefik and vulcain?
traefik is written in Go and vulcain 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 vulcain?
Choose traefik if you want the larger community (65,003 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vulcain if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.