SHSelfHostIndex

mitmproxy vs SWAG

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?
MI mitmproxy Interactive HTTPS proxy for inspection and debugging VS SW SWAG Secure web application gateway with Nginx and Certbot
FeaturemitmproxySWAG
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguagePythonDockerfile
Setup difficultyEasyEasy
Min. RAM256 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, sourcedocker
GitHub stars★ 44,605★ 3,709
First released20102020
ReplacesCharles Proxy, FiddlerCloudflare

Why pick each one

Choose mitmproxy if…

  • Powerful for debugging
  • Highly scriptable
mitmproxy details

Choose SWAG if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (3.7k GitHub stars)
SWAG details

Frequently asked questions

Is mitmproxy or SWAG better?

Neither is universally better. mitmproxy has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are mitmproxy and SWAG free and open-source?

Yes. mitmproxy is licensed under MIT and SWAG under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run mitmproxy and SWAG with Docker?

mitmproxy: yes. SWAG: yes.

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