Fabio vs Pingora
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Fabio | Pingora |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 91 · Excellent | 97 · Excellent |
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 7,343 | ★ 27,517 |
| First released | 2015 | 2024 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, Nginx | Nginx |
What are Fabio and Pingora?
Fabio
Fabio is a fast, modern, zero-configuration load balancing HTTP and TCP router that automatically updates routes from Consul. Services register themselves with no manual configuration.
- Zero-config routing
- Consul service discovery
- HTTP and TCP load balancing
- Hot route updates
Pingora
Pingora is an open-source Rust framework from Cloudflare for building fast, secure, and programmable proxies and network services. It powers a large share of Cloudflare's traffic.
- Programmable proxy framework
- Memory-safe Rust core
- High performance
- Battle-tested at Cloudflare
Fabio vs Pingora: key differences
Fabio is written in Go, while Pingora is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for Fabio versus Apache-2.0 for Pingora. Fabio is the more established project (first released 2015), while Pingora arrived in 2024. Pingora has the considerably larger community, at 27,517 GitHub stars versus 7,343. Fabio lists first-class Docker deployment; Pingora does not.
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 Pingora if…
- Battle-tested at Cloudflare
- Excellent performance
- Memory-safe Rust
Watch out for
- Rust coding required
- Not a turnkey proxy
Frequently asked questions
Is Fabio or Pingora better?
Neither is universally better. Pingora 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 Pingora free and open-source?
Yes. Fabio is licensed under MIT and Pingora under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Fabio and Pingora with Docker?
Fabio: yes. Pingora: check the project docs for container support.