Updated August 2026
    Slowing down
    6.2k

    Outline Server: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    A proxy server that runs a Shadowsocks instance for each access key and a REST API to manage the access keys.

    TL;DR • Outline Server • as of August 2026

    Outline Server is an open-source proxy project, with 6.2k GitHub stars and a health score of 39/100. It committed 15 times in the last twelve months across 5 of those months, and its status is slowing down. Licence: Apache-2.0. It does not currently meet the momentum threshold, so verify maintenance before depending on it.

    6.2k
    GitHub stars
    39/100
    Health score
    15
    Commits (12 mo)
    5/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Slowing down — Commits have thinned out over the last year.
    Last commit 2026-05-13
    Days since last commit 96
    Commits, last 3 months 0
    Commits, last 12 months 15
    Months with activity 5 of 12
    Last release 2025-02-24
    Archived No
    Licence Apache-2.0
    Category Proxy

    Health score combines commit recency, twelve-month commit volume, months with activity, release recency and archive state. Metadata refreshed August 2026.

    What the licence lets you do

    Apache-2.0

    Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    This matters most when you plan to sell a hosted version. A permissive licence means anyone — including a competitor with more capital — can do the same, so your defensibility has to come from distribution, support or data, not from the code.

    What Outline Server means for your idea

    Open · 14/100
    Proxy category →

    Outline Server is not currently shipping at a healthy pace. Popular but stalled projects inflate how competitive a category looks — and they are also risky to build on.

    The clearest opening in the dataset. Low open-source competition usually means either a genuinely underserved need or a market too small to attract volunteers — validate demand before assuming the former.

    Outline Server: common questions

    Is Outline Server still maintained in 2026?

    Slowing down. Outline Server recorded 15 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 5 of those months and 0 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-05-13. Last release: 2025-02-24. Commits have thinned out over the last year.

    Can I use Outline Server commercially?

    Outline Server is published under Apache-2.0. Permissive (MIT, Apache, BSD): you can fork it, close the source and sell it. Lowest legal friction for a commercial product.

    How crowded is the Proxy category?

    10 open-source implementations, 1 of them actively maintained, led by imgproxy at 11k stars. Saturation score 14/100 — Open. Thin or poorly maintained open-source coverage.

    Outline Server alternatives in Proxy

    Tinyproxy

    Proxy

    6.0k

    Light-weight HTTP/HTTPS proxy daemon.

    Actively maintained
    GPL-2.0

    GitProxy

    Proxy

    238

    Proxy for Git that applies rules and workflows to all outgoing git push operations and ensures they are compliant. It supports both HTTP/HTTPS and SSH protocols with security scanning and validation.

    Actively maintained
    Apache-2.0

    socks5-proxy-server

    Proxy

    142

    SOCKS5 proxy server with built-in authentication and Telegram-bot for user management and user statistics on data spent (handy when you pay per GB of data). It is dockerised and simple to install.

    Dormant
    Apache-2.0

    Competing with free? Check the market first.

    IdeaProof scores your idea against live competitors, market size and 1,000+ documented startup failures in about two minutes.