OpenVPN vs WireGuard

OpenVPN significantly outpaces WireGuard in community adoption with 14,551 stars compared to 714 stars on GitHub. This 20.4x difference suggests OpenVPN has a much larger and more active community. In terms of developer contributions, OpenVPN has 3,396 forks, indicating strong developer engagement.

WireGuard is growing faster, adding 13 stars in the last 30 days (+1.9%) against adding 164 stars for OpenVPN (+1.1%). WireGuard is the smaller project of the two, so it is closing the gap rather than extending a lead.

OpenVPN shows more recent development activity with its last commit 22 hours ago, while WireGuard was last updated 4 months ago. This suggests OpenVPN is being more actively maintained.

Both tools share common technology foundations, being built with Bash, Python, C, Objective-C. However, they differ in their additional technology choices: OpenVPN uses Perl while WireGuard leverages JavaScript, Golang, Rust, C++, Haskell.

OpenVPN has been in development longer, starting 14 years ago, compared to WireGuard which began 7 years ago. This 7.8-year head start suggests OpenVPN may have more mature features and established processes.

WireGuard is licensed under GPL-2.0, while OpenVPN's license terms are not publicly specified.

Both tools serve similar use cases in VPN & Secure Access. However, they also have distinct specializations: WireGuard extends into VPN & Secure Tunnels, Network Security.

OpenVPN provides self-hosting options for complete data control and customization, while WireGuard may be primarily cloud-based or require different deployment approaches.