Pound 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?
Pound
Lightweight reverse proxy and HTTPS load balancer
VS
Sozu
Hot-reconfigurable HTTP reverse proxy in Rust
| Feature | Pound | Sozu |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 32 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 70 | ★ 3,715 |
| First released | 2002 | 2016 |
| Replaces | NGINX, HAProxy | HAProxy, Nginx |
Why pick each one
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 Pound or Sozu better?
Neither is universally better. Sozu 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 Pound and Sozu free and open-source?
Yes. Pound is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Sozu under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Pound and Sozu with Docker?
Pound: check the project docs for container support. Sozu: yes.