Caddy vs Envoy: Which Proxy to Self-Host?

Quick Verdict Caddy is the right choice for self-hosting. Two-line configs, automatic HTTPS, and a clean plugin ecosystem. Envoy is a service mesh proxy for cloud-native infrastructure — its verbose typed YAML configuration and enterprise feature set are mismatched for homelab or VPS setups. Overview Caddy is a modern web server and reverse proxy that provides automatic HTTPS with zero configuration. Its Caddyfile format is the simplest proxy config syntax available. Current version: 2.10.2. Envoy is a high-performance edge and service proxy, originally built at Lyft and now a CNCF graduated project. It's the data plane for Istio and other service meshes. Current version: v1.37.0. Feature Comparison Feature Caddy 2.10 Envoy v1.37 Automatic HTTPS Yes (zero config) No Config format Caddyfile (2 lines per site) Typed YAML (30+ lines per route) JSON API Yes (hot reload) xDS API (complex) Static file serving Yes No gRPC proxying Yes Native first-class Circuit breaking No Yes Distributed tra