SHSelfHostIndex

HAProxy Data Plane API vs Traefik

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?
HA HAProxy Data Plane API REST API for dynamic HAProxy configuration VS TR Traefik Cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer
FeatureHAProxy Data Plane APITraefik
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB128 MB
Deploymentbinary, dockerdocker, kubernetes, helm
GitHub stars★ 389★ 64,330
First released20192015
ReplacesNGINX Plus APIHAProxy, AWS ELB

Why pick each one

Choose HAProxy Data Plane API if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
HAProxy Data Plane API details

Choose Traefik if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 64.3k GitHub stars
Traefik details

Frequently asked questions

Is HAProxy Data Plane API or Traefik better?

Neither is universally better. Traefik has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are HAProxy Data Plane API and Traefik free and open-source?

Yes. HAProxy Data Plane API is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Traefik under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run HAProxy Data Plane API and Traefik with Docker?

HAProxy Data Plane API: yes. Traefik: yes.

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