relayd vs HAProxy
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?
relayd
OpenBSD load balancer and relay daemon
VS
HAProxy
Reliable, high-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer
| Feature | relayd | HAProxy |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | ISC | GPL-2.0 |
| Language | C | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,851 | ★ 6,760 |
| First released | 2006 | 2001 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, F5 BIG-IP | F5 BIG-IP, AWS ELB |
Why pick each one
Choose HAProxy if…
- Released under the GPL-2.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 6.8k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is relayd or HAProxy better?
Neither is universally better. HAProxy has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are relayd and HAProxy free and open-source?
Yes. relayd is licensed under ISC and HAProxy under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run relayd and HAProxy with Docker?
relayd: check the project docs for container support. HAProxy: yes.