Tinyproxy 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?
Tinyproxy
Lightweight HTTP and HTTPS forward proxy daemon
VS
Traefik
Cloud-native reverse proxy and load balancer
| Feature | Tinyproxy | Traefik |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 16 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | bare-metal, source, docker | docker, kubernetes, helm |
| GitHub stars | ★ 5,951 | ★ 64,330 |
| First released | 1998 | 2015 |
| Replaces | Squid | HAProxy, AWS ELB |
Why pick each one
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 Tinyproxy or Traefik better?
Neither is universally better. Traefik has the larger community, while Tinyproxy is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Tinyproxy and Traefik free and open-source?
Yes. Tinyproxy is licensed under GPL-2.0 and Traefik under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Tinyproxy and Traefik with Docker?
Tinyproxy: yes. Traefik: yes.