River 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?
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
VS
Sozu
Hot-reconfigurable HTTP reverse proxy in Rust
| Feature | River | Sozu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | Rust | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary, source | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,351 | ★ 3,715 |
| First released | 2024 | 2016 |
| Replaces | nginx, HAProxy | HAProxy, Nginx |
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
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 River or Sozu better?
Neither is universally better. Sozu 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 River and Sozu free and open-source?
Yes. River is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Sozu under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run River and Sozu with Docker?
River: check the project docs for container support. Sozu: yes.