gobetween vs Sozu
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
Sozu
Hot-reconfigurable HTTP reverse proxy in Rust
| Feature | gobetween | Sozu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Go | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 1,986 | ★ 3,715 |
| First released | 2016 | 2016 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, NGINX Plus | HAProxy, Nginx |
Why pick each one
Choose Sozu if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.7k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
Frequently asked questions
Is gobetween or Sozu better?
Neither is universally better. Sozu 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 Sozu free and open-source?
Yes. gobetween is licensed under MIT and Sozu under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run gobetween and Sozu with Docker?
gobetween: yes. Sozu: yes.