River 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?
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
VS
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
| Feature | River | Pound |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Language | Rust | C |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 32 MB |
| Deployment | binary, source | bare-metal, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,351 | ★ 70 |
| First released | 2024 | 2002 |
| Replaces | nginx, HAProxy | 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 River or Pound better?
Neither is universally better. River 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 River and Pound free and open-source?
Yes. River is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pound under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run River and Pound with Docker?
River: check the project docs for container support. Pound: check the project docs for container support.