Envoy Proxy vs frp

Envoy Proxy is a free, open-source proxy for edge traffic and service-to-service communication in cloud-native and AI-native applications. It runs as a self-contained process outside the application and can serve software written in different languages. Envoy handles HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, gRPC, and HTTP/3, with HTTP/3 documented as alpha. Traffic features include routing, retries, circuit breaking, rate limiting, request shadowing, and outlier detection. It exposes subsystem statistics, an administration interface, and distributed tracing through third-party providers. Security features include TLS, JWT, role-based access control, and OAuth-related authorization and authentication. Operators must configure protections such as watermarks, overload management, and circuit breakers for availability resilience. Installation options include Docker images for amd64 and arm64, macOS Homebrew, and static binaries. Its API is compatible with Envoy Gateway and Istio.

frp is a free, self-hosted reverse proxy for making intranet services reachable from the public network through nodes with public IP addresses. It supports TCP, UDP, HTTP, and HTTPS proxying, while client-server communication also supports QUIC, KCP, WebSocket, and other protocols. Its XTCP mode uses P2P hole punching so successful connections send traffic directly rather than through frps, but success depends on the network’s NAT type and cannot be assured. Client and server authentication support tokens and OIDC, with token authentication as the default; encryption is among the project’s listed capabilities. Proxy groups can balance load, and TCP or HTTP health checks can remove failed services from frps. Monitoring can run in memory or through Prometheus, which requires the Dashboard to be enabled. frps has a browser Dashboard for status and proxy statistics, while frpc includes an Admin UI for proxy status and configuration. Configuration supports TOML, YAML, and JSON; INI is still supported but no longer recommended. Written in Go, frp provides platform-specific binaries for cross-platform deployment without additional dependencies. The project is under development and says version 2 will not be compatible with version 1.