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Traefik vs nginx: What are the differences?

Traefik and Nginx are both popular reverse proxy servers and load balancers that are commonly used in web applications. While they have some similarities in terms of functionality, there are key differences between the two.

1. Configuration: Traefik uses a dynamic configuration approach, where it can automatically discover and configure backend services based on built-in providers like Docker, Kubernetes, and Consul. On the other hand, Nginx requires manual configuration through static configuration files that need to be updated every time a new backend service is added.

2. Routing: Traefik excels at dynamic and flexible routing based on various criteria like hostnames, paths, and headers. It allows for easy routing to different services based on URL patterns, making it ideal for microservices architectures. Nginx also supports routing but is more focused on efficiency and serving static content, making it better suited for traditional web server usage.

3. Ingress Controller: Traefik is designed to work as an Ingress controller for Kubernetes, providing advanced routing and load balancing capabilities. It integrates seamlessly with Kubernetes and allows for automatic configuration based on Kubernetes resources. Nginx can also be used as an Ingress controller but requires additional configuration and setup.

4. TLS Termination: Traefik comes with built-in support for Let's Encrypt, allowing for automatic generation and renewal of TLS certificates. It simplifies the process of securing websites with HTTPS by handling the certificate management automatically. Nginx requires manual generation and configuration of TLS certificates, making it more complex to set up HTTPS for websites.

5. Metrics and Monitoring: Traefik provides built-in metrics and monitoring through an integrated dashboard and supports integration with popular monitoring systems like Prometheus. Nginx does not have built-in monitoring capabilities and requires third-party tools for metrics and monitoring.

6. Flexibility: Traefik is designed to be lightweight and easy to use, making it a good choice for small to medium-sized deployments. It has a simple and intuitive API and supports hot reloading of configurations. Nginx, on the other hand, is more feature-rich and provides advanced configuration options, making it suitable for complex deployments and high-performance scenarios.

In summary, Traefik and Nginx offer similar functionalities as reverse proxy servers and load balancers, but they have key differences in terms of configuration, routing, Ingress controller support, TLS termination, metrics and monitoring, and flexibility. The choice between the two depends on the specific requirements and complexity of the deployment.

Advice on NGINX and Traefik

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities. Ready, aim fire!

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Replies (1)
Simon Aronsson
Developer Advocate at k6 / Load Impact · | 4 upvotes · 716.4K views
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I would pick nginx over both IIS and Apace HTTP Server any day. Combine it with docker, and as you grow maybe even traefik, and you'll have a really flexible solution for serving http content where you can take sites and projects up and down without effort, easily move it between systems and dont have to handle any dependencies on your actual local machine.

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From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

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Replies (3)
Recommends
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I use nginx because it is very light weight. Where Apache tries to include everything in the web server, nginx opts to have external programs/facilities take care of that so the web server can focus on efficiently serving web pages. While this can seem inefficient, it limits the number of new bugs found in the web server, which is the element that faces the client most directly.

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Leandro Barral
Recommends
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I use nginx because its more flexible and easy to configure

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Christian Cwienk
Software Developer at SAP · | 1 upvotes · 682.5K views
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I use Apache HTTP Server because it's intuitive, comprehensive, well-documented, and just works

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Decisions about NGINX and Traefik
Howie Zhao
Full Stack Engineer at yintrust · | 6 upvotes · 145K views

We use Traefik as the web server.

The reasons for choosing Traefik over Nginx are as follows:

  • Traefik built-in Let’s Encrypt and supports automatic renewal
  • Traefik automatically enables HTTP/2
  • Prometheus can be supported through simple Traefik configuration
  • cookiecutter django integrates Traefik's configuration by default
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Gabriel Pa

We switched to Traefik so we can use the REST API to dynamically configure subdomains and have the ability to redirect between multiple servers.

We still use nginx with a docker-compose to expose the traffic from our APIs and TCP microservices, but for managing routing to the internet Traefik does a much better job

The biggest win for naologic was the ability to set dynamic configurations without having to restart the server

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Pros of NGINX
Pros of Traefik
  • 1.4K
    High-performance http server
  • 894
    Performance
  • 730
    Easy to configure
  • 607
    Open source
  • 530
    Load balancer
  • 289
    Free
  • 288
    Scalability
  • 226
    Web server
  • 175
    Simplicity
  • 136
    Easy setup
  • 30
    Content caching
  • 21
    Web Accelerator
  • 15
    Capability
  • 14
    Fast
  • 12
    High-latency
  • 12
    Predictability
  • 8
    Reverse Proxy
  • 7
    The best of them
  • 7
    Supports http/2
  • 5
    Great Community
  • 5
    Lots of Modules
  • 5
    Enterprise version
  • 4
    High perfomance proxy server
  • 3
    Embedded Lua scripting
  • 3
    Streaming media delivery
  • 3
    Streaming media
  • 3
    Reversy Proxy
  • 2
    Blash
  • 2
    GRPC-Web
  • 2
    Lightweight
  • 2
    Fast and easy to set up
  • 2
    Slim
  • 2
    saltstack
  • 1
    Virtual hosting
  • 1
    Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast
  • 1
    Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior
  • 1
    Ingress controller
  • 20
    Kubernetes integration
  • 18
    Watch service discovery updates
  • 14
    Letsencrypt support
  • 13
    Swarm integration
  • 12
    Several backends
  • 6
    Ready-to-use dashboard
  • 4
    Easy setup
  • 4
    Rancher integration
  • 1
    Mesos integration
  • 1
    Mantl integration

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Cons of NGINX
Cons of Traefik
  • 10
    Advanced features require subscription
  • 7
    Complicated setup
  • 7
    Not very performant (fast)

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What is NGINX?

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

What is Traefik?

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.

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What are some alternatives to NGINX and 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.
lighttpd
lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.
Caddy
Caddy 2 is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go.
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.
Microsoft IIS
Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.
See all alternatives