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.
Not the right match-up?
relayd
OpenBSD load balancer and relay daemon
VS
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
| Feature | relayd | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | ★ 3,851 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2006 | 2002 |
| Replaces | HAProxy, F5 BIG-IP | NGINX, HAProxy |
Why pick each one
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.