Traefik (pronounced traffic[3]), or Traefik Proxy,[4] is an open-source HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer. Version 1.0.0 was released in 2016, and was written in Go by Emile Vauge.[5][6][7] Traefik and its associated documentation are under the MIT License.[2]
History
The project was first started in 2015, and version 1.0.0 was released a year later in 2016.[5] The developer behind the project, Emile Vauge, stated that traditional proxies at the time were not "well-suited for these dynamic environments" like Kubernetes, whereas Traefik "reconfigures itself on the fly" by querying container orchestrator APIs and reacting to changes in them.[8][9]
By 2018, the project had 19,000 stars on GitHub, and 10 million pulls on DockerHub.[8]
By 2020, the project had been downloaded 2 billion times, and had 30,000 stars on GitHub.[10] In September 2020, Containous, the company founded by Traefiks original developer, which also supports the development of Traefik Proxy,[11] was renamed to Traefik Labs.[12]
By 2022, traefik had been downloaded over 3 billion times, and had over 100 plugins available, making it one of the most popular software solutions in its category.[13]
Functionality
Traefik has support for the following features:
- Automatically obtaining a TLS certificate through the ACME protocol,[14] thus acting as a TLS termination proxy.[3]
- WebSocket, gRPC, and HTTP/2[3]
- Dynamic configuration via a REST API[15]
- Metrics for Prometheus[3]
Traefik can also query the APIs of different "providers" (container engines, container orchestrators, key-value stores, or cloud providers) and then dynamically reconfigure its routes when it detects a change.[9] For instance, it can query the Docker API to detect which ports are exposed by containers, listen to events like container starts and stops, and read the Docker labels of other containers which it uses to infer routing rules.[16][17]
Traefik Hub
Traefik Hub is a commercial product offered separately from the Traefik reverse proxy. It is a GitOps-based, API management solution.[18][7]
See also
References
- ^ "Release 3.7.10". 31 July 2026. Retrieved 2 August 2026.
- ^ a b "MIT License". GitHub. Traefik Labs. 17 September 2025. Retrieved 17 September 2025.
- ^ a b c d e "traefik/README.md at 02443545e743f00821098def5f7e0f30d24e3e21 · traefik/traefik". GitHub. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ "Traefik Proxy v3.5 is GA: Here's What It Includes". Traefik Labs. 24 July 2025. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ a b "Release v1.0.0 · traefik/traefik". Github. 2023-06-10.
- ^ "v3.5.3". 2025-09-26. Retrieved 2025-10-21.
- ^ a b "Traefik Labs Launches New Kubernetes-Native API Management with Third-Party Ingress Controller Support". DutchNews.nl. 17 April 2023. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
- ^ a b Jackson, Joab (12 December 2018). "Traefik: A Dynamic Reverse Proxy for Kubernetes and Microservices". The New Stack. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ a b "Traefik Providers Documentation | Traefik | v3.5". doc.traefik.io. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ Miller, Ron (23 September 2020). "Five years after creating Traefik application proxy, open-source project hits 2B downloads". TechCrunch. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ "Introducing Traefik Enterprise Edition: We Made It Distributed". TechCrunch. 16 September 2025. Retrieved 17 September 2025.
- ^ Vauge, Emile (23 September 2020). "Traefik Labs: Incubating the Future of Cloud Native Networking". Traefik Labs. Retrieved 17 September 2025.
- ^ "Traefik Labs Surpasses 3 Billion Downloads of Its Open Source Software, Adds More Than 100 Plugins and Delivers Updates Across Its Product Line". Business Wire. 9 Aug 2022. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
- ^ Warren, Brad (7 March 2024). "Should Caddy and Traefik Replace Certbot?". Electronic Frontier Foundation. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
- ^ a b "Traefik Proxy Documentation - Traefik". doc.traefik.io. Retrieved 9 September 2025.
- ^ "HTTP routing with Traefik". Docker Documentation. 24 October 2024. Retrieved 16 September 2025.
- ^ "Traefik Docker Documentation - Traefik". doc.traefik.io. Retrieved 16 September 2025.
- ^ Lardinois, Frederic (17 May 2023). "Traefik Labs launches Traefik Hub, a Kubernetes-native API management service". TechCrunch. Retrieved 5 September 2025.
