Fabio 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?
Fabio
Zero-config load balancer driven by Consul
VS
OpenResty
Scalable web platform extending Nginx with Lua
| Feature | Fabio | OpenResty |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Language | Go | C |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 7,334 | ★ 13,988 |
| First released | 2015 | 2011 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, Nginx | Nginx |
Why pick each one
Choose Fabio if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 7.3k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
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 Fabio or OpenResty better?
Neither is universally better. OpenResty has the larger community, while Fabio is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Fabio and OpenResty free and open-source?
Yes. Fabio is licensed under MIT and OpenResty under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Fabio and OpenResty with Docker?
Fabio: yes. OpenResty: yes.