OpenFlare

Judgement

What it is

Complete system

What it does

A control plane for a cluster of OpenResty or Nginx nodes that syncs proxy rules without reloads. It adds a WAF with GeoIP rules, proof-of-work challenges against bots, automatic Let's Encrypt certificates, private-service tunnels and static site hosting.

Adopt it when

You run several edge or reverse-proxy servers and want one place to manage routing, certificates and bot protection as an alternative to Cloudflare.

Watch out

It is eight months old and fast-moving, and it sits in front of your traffic, so a security flaw would reach every node.

Ready for

Usable

Runs as

Self-hosted server

Built with

Go, TypeScript, OpenResty, PostgreSQL and Redis

How established

Young: started 8 months ago, latest release v3.5.8.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-06 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: OpenFlare → Go → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

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