# vulcand/vulcand

Programmatic load balancer backed by Etcd

Repository: https://github.com/vulcand/vulcand
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/vulcand
Homepage: http://vulcand.readthedocs.io/
Language: Go
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2024-07-27T08:36:18+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 23/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4542, "days_push": 767, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3095, forks 219 (observed 2026-08-28T04:07:43.331954+00:00)

## What it is
Vulcand is a programmatic, extensible HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer for microservices and API management, backed by etcd for dynamic configuration. It supports pluggable middlewares, canary deployments, real-time metrics, and OpenTracing via Jaeger.

## Use cases
- route traffic to microservices with etcd-driven dynamic configuration
- run canary deployments with gradual traffic shifting
- manage APIs with rate limiting and pluggable middlewares
- collect distributed traces for proxied requests with Jaeger
- run a proxy as a Kubernetes DaemonSet with host aliasing

## When to choose
- you already run etcd and want a proxy configured through it
- you need programmatic, API-driven traffic management for microservices
- you want canary releases and real-time metrics in a Go-based proxy

## When to avoid
- you need a general-purpose proxy without an etcd dependency
- you want a modern, actively developed gateway - consider alternatives as development has slowed
- you need non-HTTP protocols like TCP or gRPC load balancing

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: maintenance
- function: proxy, load-testing, middleware, api-gateway, tracing, monitoring
- domain: microservices, apis, backend
- platform: go, self-hosted
- tags: etcd, reverse-proxy, canary-deployments, api-management, hystrix-inspired, devops, linux, docker, kubernetes

## Member repositories
- vulcand/vulcand (main) score 23

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:43.331954+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:46:23.433009+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/vulcand/vulcand (fetched 2026-08-28T04:07:43.331954+00:00, sha 1edd490bf4ac)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.