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.
| Feature | relayd | River |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Read-the-docs project | Read-the-docs project |
| Health score | 86 · Excellent | 17 · At risk |
| 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 | ★ 3,884 | ★ 2,353 |
| First released | 2006 | 2024 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, F5 BIG-IP | nginx, HAProxy |
What are relayd and River?
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
River
River is a reverse-proxy application built on Cloudflare's Pingora engine, providing a configurable binary for HTTP proxying and load balancing. It is self-hosted and configured through files.
- Pingora-based
- Load balancing
- File-driven config
- Memory-safe Rust
relayd vs River: key differences
Relayd is written in C, while River is built with Rust. Licensing differs — ISC for relayd versus Apache-2.0 for River. Relayd is the lighter option, starting around 32 MB of RAM against 64 MB for River. Relayd is the more established project (first released 2006), while River arrived in 2024.
Why pick each one
Choose relayd if…
- Tightly integrated with OpenBSD
- Very lightweight
Watch out for
- OpenBSD focused
- Terse configuration
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.
Which is lighter on resources, relayd or River?
relayd has the smaller minimum footprint at 32 MB of RAM, compared to about 64 MB for River. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.