River 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?
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
VS
Traefik
Cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer
| Feature | River | Traefik |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Rust | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | binary, source | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,351 | ★ 64,330 |
| First released | 2024 | 2015 |
| Replaces | nginx, HAProxy | HAProxy, AWS ELB |
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 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
Frequently asked questions
Is River 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 River and Traefik free and open-source?
Yes. River is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Traefik under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run River and Traefik with Docker?
River: check the project docs for container support. Traefik: yes.