Fabio 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.
Not the right match-up?
Fabio
Zero-config load balancer driven by Consul
VS
Tengine
Nginx-derived web server with extra features
| Feature | Fabio | Tengine |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 13,323 |
| 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 Tengine if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 13.3k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Fabio or Tengine better?
Neither is universally better. Tengine 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 Tengine free and open-source?
Yes. Fabio is licensed under MIT and Tengine under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Fabio and Tengine with Docker?
Fabio: yes. Tengine: yes.