Envoy vs gobetween
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Envoy | gobetween |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 37 · At risk |
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | C++ | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 28,983 | ★ 1,988 |
| First released | 2016 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Nginx, HAProxy | HAProxy, NGINX Plus |
What are Envoy and gobetween?
Envoy
Envoy is a high-performance, open-source edge and service proxy designed for cloud-native applications and service meshes. It offers advanced load balancing, observability, and dynamic configuration.
- Service mesh data plane
- Dynamic xDS configuration
- Rich observability
- Advanced load balancing
gobetween
gobetween is a free, lightweight L4 load balancer and reverse proxy supporting TCP and UDP with multiple discovery and health-check backends. It is designed for simple, fast traffic distribution.
- TCP and UDP balancing
- Service discovery
- Health checks
- REST API
Envoy vs gobetween: key differences
Envoy is written in C++, while gobetween is built with Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Envoy versus MIT for gobetween. Gobetween is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Envoy. Envoy has the considerably larger community, at 28,983 GitHub stars versus 1,988.
Why pick each one
Choose Envoy if…
- Advanced load balancing
- Dynamic configuration API
- Deep observability features
Watch out for
- Steep learning curve
- Verbose YAML configuration
- Heavy for simple setups
Choose gobetween if…
- Single small binary
- Easy to configure
Watch out for
- L4 only
- Smaller community
Frequently asked questions
Is Envoy or gobetween better?
Neither is universally better. Envoy has the larger community, while gobetween is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Envoy and gobetween free and open-source?
Yes. Envoy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gobetween under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Envoy and gobetween with Docker?
Envoy: yes. gobetween: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Envoy or gobetween?
gobetween has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Envoy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.