Caddy vs Traefik

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

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FeatureCaddyTraefik
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 74,748★ 64,330
First released20152015
ReplacesNginx, ApacheHAProxy, AWS ELB

Why pick each one

Choose Caddy if…

  • Zero-config TLS
  • Easy to learn
Caddy details

Choose Traefik if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 64.3k GitHub stars
Traefik details

Frequently asked questions

Is Caddy or Traefik better?

Caddy is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler easy setup. Consider Traefik if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Caddy and Traefik free and open-source?

Yes. Caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Traefik under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Caddy and Traefik with Docker?

Caddy: yes. Traefik: yes.

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