gobetween vs River
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?
gobetween
Modern L4 load balancer and reverse proxy
VS
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
| Feature | gobetween | River |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,986 | ★ 2,351 |
| First released | 2016 | 2024 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, NGINX Plus | nginx, HAProxy |
Why pick each one
Choose River if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Active community (2.4k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is gobetween or River better?
Neither is universally better. River has the larger community, while gobetween is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are gobetween and River free and open-source?
Yes. gobetween is licensed under MIT and River under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run gobetween and River with Docker?
gobetween: yes. River: check the project docs for container support.