relayd 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?
relayd
OpenBSD load balancer and relay daemon
VS
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
| Feature | relayd | River |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | ISC | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 3,851 | ★ 2,351 |
| First released | 2006 | 2024 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, F5 BIG-IP | 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 relayd or River better?
Neither is universally better. relayd has the larger community, while River is simpler to set up (medium difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are relayd and River free and open-source?
Yes. relayd is licensed under ISC and River under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run relayd and River with Docker?
relayd: check the project docs for container support. River: check the project docs for container support.