gobetween 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.
| Feature | gobetween | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 37 · At risk | 69 · Good |
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | C |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,988 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2016 | 2002 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, NGINX Plus | NGINX, HAProxy |
What are gobetween and Pound?
gobetween
gobetween is a free, lightweight L4 load balancer and reverse proxy supporting TCP and UDP with multiple discovery and health-check backends. It is designed for simple, fast traffic distribution.
- TCP and UDP balancing
- Service discovery
- Health checks
- REST API
Pound
Pound is a small reverse proxy and load balancer that terminates HTTPS and distributes requests across backend web servers. It is intended to be simple, secure, and easy to audit.
- HTTPS termination
- Backend load balancing
- Session stickiness
- Small auditable codebase
gobetween vs Pound: key differences
Gobetween is written in Go, while Pound is built with C. Licensing differs — MIT for gobetween versus GPL-3.0 for Pound. Pound is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 64 MB for gobetween. Pound is the more established project (first released 2002), while gobetween arrived in 2016. Gobetween has the considerably larger community, at 1,988 GitHub stars versus 70. Gobetween lists first-class Docker deployment; Pound does not.
Why pick each one
Choose gobetween if…
- Single small binary
- Easy to configure
Watch out for
- L4 only
- Smaller community
Choose Pound if…
- Tiny and simple
- Easy to secure
Watch out for
- Limited features
- Minimal community
Frequently asked questions
Is gobetween or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. gobetween has the larger community; both share a easy setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are gobetween and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. gobetween is licensed under MIT and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run gobetween and Pound with Docker?
gobetween: yes. Pound: check the project docs for container support.
Which is lighter on resources, gobetween or Pound?
Pound has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 64 MB for gobetween. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.