Envoy vs OpenResty
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?
Envoy
Cloud-native high-performance edge and service proxy
VS
OpenResty
Scalable web platform extending Nginx with Lua
| Feature | Envoy | OpenResty |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Language | C++ | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 28,735 | ★ 13,988 |
| First released | 2016 | 2011 |
| Replaces | Nginx, HAProxy | Nginx |
Why pick each one
Choose Envoy if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
- Mature project with 28.7k GitHub stars
Choose OpenResty if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 14k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Envoy or OpenResty better?
Neither is universally better. Envoy has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Envoy and OpenResty free and open-source?
Yes. Envoy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenResty under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Envoy and OpenResty with Docker?
Envoy: yes. OpenResty: yes.