Caddy - The Ultimate Server with Automatic HTTPS
Caddy is a powerful, enterprise-ready, open source web server with automatic HTTPS written in Go
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Caddy is a fast, extensible, multi-platform HTTP/1-2-3 web server with automatic HTTPS by default.
🚀 Overview
Caddy is a powerful, open-source web server that automatically enables HTTPS for all sites it serves, eliminating the complexity of manual certificate management. It acts as a drop-in replacement for traditional servers like Nginx or Apache but with built-in security, scalability, and ease of use.
The project solves key problems in web serving such as tedious TLS setup, certificate renewal, and ensuring compliance (PCI, HIPAA, NIST). It's built for developers, DevOps engineers, SaaS providers handling custom domains, and enterprises running large-scale deployments.
Caddy was created to make the web inherently more secure by defaulting to HTTPS everywhere, providing a production-ready platform that's fun to use, extensible via Go modules, and runs anywhere without dependencies.
✨ Key Features
- Automatic HTTPS: Provisions and renews TLS certificates via Let's Encrypt, ZeroSSL, or custom CAs for any domain, including localhost and internal networks.
- Dynamic configuration: RESTful JSON API allows runtime changes without restarts.
- Reverse proxy & load balancing: Supports HTTP/3, WebSockets, gRPC, FastCGI (PHP), health checks, retries.
- Extensible modules: Pluggable Go architecture for custom functionality.
- On-Demand TLS & PKI: Ideal for SaaS custom domains; built-in CA hierarchy with Smallstep.
- Optional: FrankenPHP for embedded, high-performance PHP apps.
🛠 Tech Stack
- Core: Go (static, cross-platform binary with no dependencies)
- Configuration: Caddyfile (human-readable), JSON API, adapters (YAML, TOML, NGINX)
- PKI: Smallstep libraries
- Protocols: HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 (QUIC)
- Deployment: Docker, native binaries, systemd
👥 Who Is This For?
This project is useful for:
- Developers who want effortless HTTPS and simple web serving
- Teams looking for scalable proxies, load balancers, and compliance-ready servers
- Indie makers building SaaS apps with dynamic custom domains
📸 Screenshots / Demo
- Live demo: https://caddyserver.com (Point a DNS subdomain like
demo.example.comtoCNAME demo.caddyserver.comto experience automatic HTTPS provisioning) - GitHub: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy
🔥 Project Status
- 🟢 Actively building
Last updated: 2026-03-24
❓ FAQ
Is this project free?
Yes — Open Source (Free for all use; relies on sponsorships for development. Enterprise support available.)
Is the source code available?
Yes — https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy
Can I contribute?
Yes — Open issues/PRs on GitHub, develop Go plugins, join discussions on https://caddy.community, or sponsor at https://caddyserver.com/sponsor.
📬 Contact & Links
- Website: https://caddyserver.com
- GitHub: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/caddyserver
- Email: Sponsors: caddy@caddyserver.com (via https://caddyserver.com/sponsor); community: https://caddy.community
Built with ❤️ and kept warm on WarmIndex.
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