relayd 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 | relayd | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 86 · Excellent | 69 · Good |
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | ISC | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | C |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,884 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2006 | 2002 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, F5 BIG-IP | NGINX, HAProxy |
What are relayd and Pound?
relayd
relayd is OpenBSD's daemon for relaying and load-balancing TCP connections, supporting application-layer filtering and SSL/TLS acceleration. It integrates closely with the pf packet filter.
- TCP load balancing
- Application-layer filtering
- TLS acceleration
- pf integration
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
relayd vs Pound: key differences
Both projects are written in C. Licensing differs — ISC for relayd versus GPL-3.0 for Pound. Pound is the more established project (first released 2002), while relayd arrived in 2006. Relayd has the considerably larger community, at 3,884 GitHub stars versus 70.
Why pick each one
Choose relayd if…
- Tightly integrated with OpenBSD
- Very lightweight
Watch out for
- OpenBSD focused
- Terse configuration
Choose Pound if…
- Tiny and simple
- Easy to secure
Watch out for
- Limited features
- Minimal community
Frequently asked questions
Is relayd or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. relayd has the larger community, while Pound is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are relayd and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. relayd is licensed under ISC and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run relayd and Pound with Docker?
relayd: check the project docs for container support. Pound: check the project docs for container support.