Envoy vs Tengine
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 | Tengine |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 75 · Good |
| 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 | ★ 28,983 | ★ 13,373 |
| First released | 2016 | 2011 |
| Replaces | Nginx, HAProxy | Nginx |
What are Envoy and Tengine?
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
Tengine
Tengine is a web server originated by Taobao based on Nginx, adding advanced features for high-traffic websites such as dynamic module loading and enhanced load balancing. It is fully Nginx compatible.
- Nginx-compatible server
- Dynamic module loading
- Enhanced load balancing
- Proven at large scale
Envoy vs Tengine: key differences
Envoy is written in C++, while Tengine is built with C. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Envoy versus BSD-2-Clause for Tengine. Tengine is the lighter option, starting around 128 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Envoy. Tengine is the more established project (first released 2011), while Envoy arrived in 2016. Envoy has the considerably larger community, at 28,983 GitHub stars versus 13,373.
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 Tengine if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 13.4k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Envoy or Tengine 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 Tengine free and open-source?
Yes. Envoy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Tengine under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Envoy and Tengine with Docker?
Envoy: yes. Tengine: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Envoy or Tengine?
Tengine has the smaller minimum footprint at 128 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Envoy. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.