head to head · open source
Tyk vs CliRelay
Tyk has 10,874 GitHub stars, 1,169 forks, 509 open issues and last shipped yesterday. CliRelay has 1,048 stars, 133 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Tyk leads on adoption by 938% (10,874 vs 1,048 stars). Tyk is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence; CliRelay is written in Go under MIT. Tyk has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, CliRelay 13%. Tyk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai-gateway, api-gateway, go, llm), 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
| Tyk | CliRelay | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 133 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tyk if
- You weight community size — 11K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick CliRelay if
- You want the CliRelay feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and CliRelay fits your workflow better
About Tyk
Documentation Forum Blog About Tyk API Gateway Tyk Gateway is the cloud native, open source, enterprise ready API Gateway supporting REST, GraphQL, TCP and gRPC protocols. Built from the ground up, as the fastest API Gateway on the planet since 2014. Tyk Gateway is provided ‘Batteries included’, with no feature lockout. Enabling your organization to rate limit, auth, gather analytics, apply microservice patterns and more with ease. Tyk runs natively on Kubernetes , if you prefer, thanks to the Tyk Kubernetes Operator Everything you need to manage APIs. Follow the simple Get Started guide below 👇 The Enterprise…
About CliRelay
🔀 CliRelay A unified proxy server for AI CLI tools — use your existing subscriptions with any OpenAI / Gemini / Claude / Codex compatible client. Multi tenant web panel · request logs & quotas · routing groups & failover · self hosted English 中文 📖 Docs · 🖥️ Management Panel · 🐛 Report Bug · ✨ Request Feature ⚡ What is CliRelay? ✨ Heavily enhanced fork of the CLIProxyAPI project — rebuilt with a production grade management layer, web control panel hosting, and a terminal TUI for day 2 operations. CliRelay turns AI CLI subscriptions, OAuth credentials, API keys, and compatible upstream services into one…
read the full CliRelay overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tyk or CliRelay more popular?
Tyk has 10,874 GitHub stars and CliRelay has 1,048. Tyk has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tyk and CliRelay free?
Both are open source. Tyk has no licence declared in this registry, and CliRelay is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Tyk and CliRelay?
Tyk is written in Go and CliRelay 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, Tyk or CliRelay?
Choose Tyk if you want the larger community (10,874 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose CliRelay if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.