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.
| Feature | gobetween | Sozu |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 37 · At risk | 88 · Excellent |
| 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 | ★ 1,988 | ★ 3,732 |
| First released | 2016 | 2016 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, NGINX Plus | HAProxy, Nginx |
What are gobetween and Sozu?
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
Sozu
Sozu is an open-source HTTP reverse proxy written in Rust that can be reconfigured at runtime without dropping connections. It is built for safety and zero-downtime configuration changes.
- Hot configuration reload
- Memory-safe Rust core
- Zero-downtime changes
- Runtime control API
gobetween vs Sozu: key differences
Gobetween is written in Go, while Sozu is built with Rust. Licensing differs — MIT for gobetween versus AGPL-3.0 for Sozu. Gobetween is the lighter option, starting around 64 MB of RAM against 128 MB for Sozu.
Why pick each one
Choose gobetween if…
- Single small binary
- Easy to configure
Watch out for
- L4 only
- Smaller community
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.
Which is lighter on resources, gobetween or Sozu?
gobetween has the smaller minimum footprint at 64 MB of RAM, compared to about 128 MB for Sozu. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.