mitmproxy 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.

Not the right match-up?
FeaturemitmproxyTraefik
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseMITMIT
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM256 MB128 MB
Deploymentdocker, binary, sourcedocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 44,605★ 64,330
First released20102015
ReplacesCharles Proxy, FiddlerHAProxy, AWS ELB

Why pick each one

Choose mitmproxy if…

  • Powerful for debugging
  • Highly scriptable
mitmproxy 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 mitmproxy or Traefik better?

Neither is universally better. Traefik has the larger community, while mitmproxy is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are mitmproxy and Traefik free and open-source?

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

Can I run mitmproxy and Traefik with Docker?

mitmproxy: yes. Traefik: yes.

Related comparisons