OpenResty vs Sozu
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?
OpenResty
Scalable web platform extending Nginx with Lua
VS
Sozu
Hot-reconfigurable HTTP reverse proxy in Rust
| Feature | OpenResty | Sozu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Hard | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 13,988 | ★ 3,715 |
| First released | 2011 | 2016 |
| Replaces | Nginx | HAProxy, Nginx |
Why pick each one
Choose OpenResty if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 14k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Choose Sozu if…
- Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (3.7k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
Frequently asked questions
Is OpenResty or Sozu better?
Neither is universally better. OpenResty has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are OpenResty and Sozu free and open-source?
Yes. OpenResty is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Sozu under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run OpenResty and Sozu with Docker?
OpenResty: yes. Sozu: yes.