Traefik
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 7 reverse proxies by recommenders
People recommend Traefik for automatic Docker and Kubernetes routing, plus hands-off HTTPS certificates and easy setup. Critics note ingress annotation handling is inconsistent and some version updates break setups.
People recommend Traefik for automatic Docker and Kubernetes routing, plus hands-off HTTPS certificates and easy setup. Critics note ingress annotation handling is inconsistent and some version updates break setups.
35 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 27
- criticize it
- 8
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 27 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Automatic routing from Docker labels
“we chose traefik because of the automatic docker label based dynamic routing”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Mist – a lightweight, self-hosted PaaS” “with docker compose/labels it's real easy to give things a reverse proxy with an auth gate and other middleware”
Comment from 15 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host” “This works pretty easily in a docker host with traefik handling domains, paths, and certificates.”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare opens more Enterprise-only features to all customers” Handles HTTPS and Let's Encrypt certificates
“Gives me TLS termination and actual domain names for the services that I want to be publicly accessible.”
Comment from 9 Oct 2026 in “Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?” “Traefik handles the routing and Let's Encrypt cert creation and renewal.”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “What I self-host” “does HTTPS almost as seamlessly as Caddy and is geared more for production and enterprise”
Comment from 20 Oct 2026 in “Let's Encrypt is adding two additional remote perspectives for domain validation” - Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Cloudflare opens more Enterprise-only features to all customers”
Easy to set up and forget
“Traefik is so easy to plug in and forget about”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “My Homelab Setup” “I've not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “Bwbach, My Guardian Goblin” “I moved to Traefik and never looked back.”
Comment from 27 Oct 2026 in “Native Prometheus Integration with Nginx” Capable routing and load balancing
“for more involved things like multiple load balancing backends, rewriting paths and headers and so on I've found it really good”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “New Nginx Exploit” “Traefik is far more capable, for example.”
Comment from 9 Mar 2026 in “My Homelab Setup”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Ingress annotation handling is inconsistent
“Traefik tries very hard to be an option in Kubernetes space, with some promising concepts, but supporting random annotations is not it.”
Comment from 14 Nov 2025 in “Kubernetes Ingress Nginx is retiring” “The main reason I dislike Traefik is because you can get away with broken ingress objects”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Ingress Nginx Retirement: What You Need to Know” Breaks in some versions or setups
“I use traefik as reverse proxy, and it just doesn't seem to work”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Uncloud - Tool for deploying containerised apps across servers without k8s” “the Photoprism image also didn't work on IPv6 because of Traefik”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “New Patches Allow Building Linux IPv6-Only, Option to Deprecate "Legacy" IPv4” “I'm gonna stay with Traefik and bare with the version issue”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813”
Other reverse proxies people recommend
The four most recommended other reverse proxies, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pangolin | 37 | 6 | 86% | 11 | — | Approved |
| TraefikThis page | 27 | 8 | 77% | 10 | — | Approved |
| HAProxy | 24 | 2 | 92% | 11 | — | Approved |
| Envoy Proxy | 14 | 7 | 67% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Nginx Proxy Manager | 10 | 0 | 100% | 6 | — | Approved |
What people said
34 of the 39 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I moved to Traefik and never looked back.”
“does HTTPS almost as seamlessly as Caddy and is geared more for production and enterprise”
“Traefik handles the routing and Let's Encrypt cert creation and renewal.”
“with docker compose/labels it's real easy to give things a reverse proxy with an auth gate and other middleware”
“Gives me TLS termination and actual domain names for the services that I want to be publicly accessible.”
“Each one has variable support for OTel data and require you to go through different hoops”
“all comfortably run in 1gb of ram”
“This works pretty easily in a docker host with traefik handling domains, paths, and certificates.”
“I've not had trouble with the default traefik proxy so far”
“I'm gonna stay with Traefik and bare with the version issue”
“Traefik cache with proper memory handling is available only in Enterprise version.”
“it's a nice upgrade from nginx proxy manager”
“the previous mess and mix of docker compose + traefik routing”
“for more involved things like multiple load balancing backends, rewriting paths and headers and so on I've found it really good”
“audio format conversion buffer underflow CVEs for Traefik”
“Using traefik or caddy as proxy.”
“instead of throwing out all the crap he's stacked together and coming up with something simple, performant and sane.”
“it still looks like an implementation issue, not a weakness designed in by the spec”
“I switched from Cloudflare Tunnels to a rathole/traefik based solution”
“I'm switching to rathole+traefik, weirdly something I was researching and experimenting with in the early hours of this morning”
“the Photoprism image also didn't work on IPv6 because of Traefik”
“Traefik is far more capable, for example.”
“Traefik is so easy to plug in and forget about”
“we chose traefik because of the automatic docker label based dynamic routing”
“my previous work designing a production-ready Laravel architecture with Traefik and FrankenPHP”
“configure Traefik (Reverse Proxy / Load Balancing / HTTPS / DNS)”
“it essentially requires your web proxy to have container access to all your other services”
“I'm deploying Swarm and traefik as described here”
“I use traefik as reverse proxy, and it just doesn't seem to work”
“Traefic hasn't been bad either.”
“Traefik tries very hard to be an option in Kubernetes space, with some promising concepts, but supporting random annotations is not it.”
“Traefik has an Nginx compatibility for annotations as well to make it easy to switch.”
“The main reason I dislike Traefik is because you can get away with broken ingress objects”
“makes Traefik a drop-in replacement to ingress Nginx, without touching your existing ingress resources”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.