acme.sh vs Anubis
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
acme.sh
Pure shell ACME client for TLS certificates
VS
Anubis
Proof-of-work proxy to block AI scraper bots
| Feature | acme.sh | Anubis |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Language | Shell | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | binary, source | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 47,426 | ★ 21,230 |
| First released | 2016 | 2025 |
| Replaces | Certbot | Cloudflare Bot Management |
Why pick each one
Choose acme.sh if…
- Released under the GPL-3.0 license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- Mature project with 47.4k GitHub stars
- Written in Shell
Choose Anubis if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 21.2k GitHub stars
Frequently asked questions
Is acme.sh or Anubis better?
Neither is universally better. acme.sh has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are acme.sh and Anubis free and open-source?
Yes. acme.sh is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Anubis under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run acme.sh and Anubis with Docker?
acme.sh: check the project docs for container support. Anubis: yes.