Envoy vs Pound
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
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
| Feature | Envoy | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | C++ | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 28,735 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2016 | 2002 |
| Replaces | Nginx, HAProxy | NGINX, HAProxy |
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
Frequently asked questions
Is Envoy or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. Envoy has the larger community, while Pound is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Envoy and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. Envoy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Envoy and Pound with Docker?
Envoy: yes. Pound: check the project docs for container support.