Updated August 2026
    Slowing down
    22k

    SafeLine: Maintenance, Licence and Alternatives

    Web application firewall / reverse proxy to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits.

    TL;DR • SafeLine • as of August 2026

    SafeLine is an open-source web servers project, with 22k GitHub stars and a health score of 43/100. It committed 6 times in the last twelve months across 2 of those months, and its status is slowing down. Licence: GPL-3.0. It does not currently meet the momentum threshold, so verify maintenance before depending on it.

    22k
    GitHub stars
    43/100
    Health score
    6
    Commits (12 mo)
    2/12
    Active months

    Maintenance health

    Status Slowing down — Commits have thinned out over the last year.
    Last commit 2026-07-31
    Days since last commit 17
    Commits, last 3 months 5
    Commits, last 12 months 6
    Months with activity 2 of 12
    Last release 2026-07-28
    Archived No
    Licence GPL-3.0
    Category Web Servers

    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

    GPL-3.0

    Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.

    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 SafeLine means for your idea

    Contested · 52/100
    Web Servers category →

    SafeLine 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.

    Winnable, but differentiation is not optional. Pick one underserved segment and be visibly better for it rather than competing feature-for-feature with a free tool.

    SafeLine: common questions

    Is SafeLine still maintained in 2026?

    Slowing down. SafeLine recorded 6 commits over the last twelve months, with activity in 2 of those months and 5 commits in the last quarter. Last commit: 2026-07-31. Last release: 2026-07-28. Commits have thinned out over the last year.

    Can I use SafeLine commercially?

    SafeLine is published under GPL-3.0. Copyleft (GPL, AGPL, MPL): derivative work must stay open. AGPL also covers software offered over a network, which blocks most closed SaaS wrappers.

    How crowded is the Web Servers category?

    19 open-source implementations, 14 of them actively maintained, led by Caddy at 75k stars. Saturation score 52/100 — Contested. Several maintained alternatives exist, but no one owns the category.

    SafeLine alternatives in Web Servers

    Caddy

    Web Servers

    75k

    Powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    Apache-2.0

    NGINX

    Web Servers

    31k

    HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server.

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    BSD-2-Clause

    Pangolin

    Web Servers

    22k

    Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with dashboard UI, access control, and WireGuard-based tunnels (alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale).

    Actively maintained
    Real momentum
    AGPL-3.0

    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.