Traefik vs Varnish

Overview

Varnish

Stacks12.6K

Followers2.7K

Votes370

GitHub Stars887

Forks195

Traefik

Stacks965

Followers1.2K

Votes93

Traefik vs Varnish: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Configuration Language: Traefik uses TOML configuration files by default, which are simple and easy to understand, making it quicker to implement and manage. On the other hand, Varnish uses its proprietary VCL (Varnish Configuration Language), which provides more advanced control and flexibility but has a steeper learning curve.
Load Balancing: Traefik is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that is designed to handle microservices and containerized applications seamlessly, offering dynamic load balancing based on various factors like round-robin, least connection, and more. In contrast, Varnish is primarily a reverse proxy cache that can also be configured as a load balancer, but its focus is more on caching than load balancing.
TLS Termination: Traefik simplifies the TLS termination process by automatically obtaining and renewing SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt, reducing the administrative overhead. Varnish, on the other hand, requires manual configuration for TLS termination, including managing SSL certificates and renewals.
Container Orchestration Integration: Traefik is commonly used in containerized environments like Docker and Kubernetes, seamlessly integrating with these tools to dynamically update its configuration based on changes in the environment. Varnish can also be used in container environments but lacks the native integrations and dynamic configuration capabilities that Traefick offers.
Protocols Supported: Traefik is focused on supporting modern protocols like HTTP/2 and gRPC, ensuring compatibility with modern web applications and performance enhancements. Varnish, being a long-standing tool in the caching and proxying realm, also supports these protocols but may require additional configuration and setup compared to Traefik.

In Summary, Traefik and Varnish differ in configuration language, load balancing capabilities, TLS termination process, container orchestration integration, and supported protocols.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs

CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Detailed Comparison

Varnish	Traefik
Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator also known as a caching HTTP reverse proxy. You install it in front of any server that speaks HTTP and configure it to cache the contents. Varnish Cache is really, really fast. It typically speeds up delivery with a factor of 300 - 1000x, depending on your architecture.	A modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy. Traefik integrates with your existing infrastructure components and configures itself automatically and dynamically.
Powerful, feature-rich web cache;HTTP accelerator; Speed up the performance of your website and streaming services	Continuously updates its configuration (No restarts!); Supports multiple load balancing algorithms; Provides HTTPS to your microservices by leveraging Let's Encrypt (wildcard certificates support); Circuit breakers, retry; High Availability with cluster mode; See the magic through its clean web UI; Websocket, HTTP/2, GRPC ready; Provides metrics; Keeps access logs; Fast; Exposes a Rest API
Statistics
GitHub Stars 887	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 195	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 12.6K	Stacks 965
Followers 2.7K	Followers 1.2K
Votes 370	Votes 93
Pros & Cons
Pros 104 High-performance 67 Very Fast 57 Very Stable 44 Very Robust 37 HTTP reverse proxy	Pros 20 Kubernetes integration 18 Watch service discovery updates 14 Letsencrypt support 13 Swarm integration 12 Several backends Cons 7 Not very performant (fast) 7 Complicated setup
Integrations
No integrations available	Marathon InfluxDB Kubernetes Docker gRPC Let's Encrypt Google Kubernetes Engine Consul StatsD Docker Swarm

What are some alternatives to Varnish, Traefik?

HAProxy

HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

Section

Edge Compute Platform gives Dev and Ops engineers the access and control they need to run compute workloads on a distributed edge.

AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB)

With Elastic Load Balancing, you can add and remove EC2 instances as your needs change without disrupting the overall flow of information. If one EC2 instance fails, Elastic Load Balancing automatically reroutes the traffic to the remaining running EC2 instances. If the failed EC2 instance is restored, Elastic Load Balancing restores the traffic to that instance. Elastic Load Balancing offers clients a single point of contact, and it can also serve as the first line of defense against attacks on your network. You can offload the work of encryption and decryption to Elastic Load Balancing, so your servers can focus on their main task.

Squid

Squid reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available operating systems, including Windows and is licensed under the GNU GPL.

Fly

Deploy apps through our global load balancer with minimal shenanigans. All Fly-enabled applications get free SSL certificates, accept traffic through our global network of datacenters, and encrypt all traffic from visitors through to application servers.

Nuster

nuster is a high performance HTTP proxy cache server and RESTful NoSQL cache server based on HAProxy.

Envoy

Originally built at Lyft, Envoy is a high performance C++ distributed proxy designed for single services and applications, as well as a communication bus and “universal data plane” designed for large microservice “service mesh” architectures.

Hipache

Hipache is a distributed proxy designed to route high volumes of http and websocket traffic to unusually large numbers of virtual hosts, in a highly dynamic topology where backends are added and removed several times per second. It is particularly well-suited for PaaS (platform-as-a-service) and other environments that are both business-critical and multi-tenant.

node-http-proxy

node-http-proxy is an HTTP programmable proxying library that supports websockets. It is suitable for implementing components such as proxies and load balancers.

Modern DDoS Protection & Edge Security Platform

Protect and accelerate your apps with Trafficmind’s global edge — DDoS defense, WAF, API security, CDN/DNS, 99.99% uptime and 24/7 expert team.

Related Comparisons

Traefik vs Varnish: What are the differences?

# Introduction

Configuration Language: Traefik uses TOML configuration files by default, which are simple and easy to understand, making it quicker to implement and manage. On the other hand, Varnish uses its proprietary VCL (Varnish Configuration Language), which provides more advanced control and flexibility but has a steeper learning curve.
Load Balancing: Traefik is a modern HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that is designed to handle microservices and containerized applications seamlessly, offering dynamic load balancing based on various factors like round-robin, least connection, and more. In contrast, Varnish is primarily a reverse proxy cache that can also be configured as a load balancer, but its focus is more on caching than load balancing.
TLS Termination: Traefik simplifies the TLS termination process by automatically obtaining and renewing SSL certificates through Let's Encrypt, reducing the administrative overhead. Varnish, on the other hand, requires manual configuration for TLS termination, including managing SSL certificates and renewals.
Container Orchestration Integration: Traefik is commonly used in containerized environments like Docker and Kubernetes, seamlessly integrating with these tools to dynamically update its configuration based on changes in the environment. Varnish can also be used in container environments but lacks the native integrations and dynamic configuration capabilities that Traefick offers.
Protocols Supported: Traefik is focused on supporting modern protocols like HTTP/2 and gRPC, ensuring compatibility with modern web applications and performance enhancements. Varnish, being a long-standing tool in the caching and proxying realm, also supports these protocols but may require additional configuration and setup compared to Traefik.

In Summary, Traefik and Varnish differ in configuration language, load balancing capabilities, TLS termination process, container orchestration integration, and supported protocols.

Traefik vs Varnish

Overview