Nginx is the reverse proxy you configure once and forget. Traefik is the one that configures itself as your containers come and go. Pick based on how often your set of services actually changes — that’s the whole decision, once you strip away the rest.

The core difference

Nginx reads a static config file. When you add a new service, you write a new server block, and reload nginx (nginx -s reload) to pick it up. It’s explicit, predictable, and nothing happens that you didn’t write down.

Traefik watches a provider — Docker, in the self-hosting case — and builds its routing config dynamically from container labels. Add a container with the right labels, and Traefik routes to it within seconds, no config file edit, no reload. Remove the container, and the route disappears automatically.

Where Traefik wins

Frequent deploys of many small services. If you’re running a dozen apps on one host and adding or removing them regularly — the common shape for someone self-hosting client projects, or running Dokploy/Coolify-style multi-app setups — Traefik’s label-based discovery removes an entire category of manual config work. This is Traefik’s actual reason to exist; it’s why Dokploy, Coolify, and most modern self-host PaaS tools use it under the hood by default.

Automatic HTTPS. Traefik’s Let’s Encrypt integration is built in and genuinely low-friction — a couple of labels and a certificate resolver config, and new domains get certificates automatically as they’re added, no separate certbot cron job to maintain.

labels:
  - "traefik.http.routers.myapp.rule=Host(`app.example.com`)"
  - "traefik.http.routers.myapp.tls.certresolver=letsencrypt"

That’s the entire routing and TLS config for one service, living next to the service definition itself instead of in a separate file you have to remember to update.

Where nginx wins

Stability and predictability. Nginx’s config format hasn’t meaningfully changed in years, is documented to exhaustion, and does exactly what the file says — no dynamic discovery layer to debug when something doesn’t route the way you expect. When nginx misroutes a request, the answer is always in the config file you can read top to bottom.

Raw performance at scale. For very high request volumes, nginx’s more mature, battle-tested request handling has a slight edge. For the traffic levels most self-hosted projects actually see, this difference doesn’t matter — but it’s real at the high end.

One static site or a handful of fixed services. If your setup is one or two apps that don’t change often, Traefik’s dynamic discovery buys you nothing you’ll notice, and you’ve added a moving part (the discovery layer, the label syntax, a different debugging model) for no real benefit over a nginx config you write once.

Familiarity and debugging depth. More engineers already know nginx. When something breaks at 2am, “read the nginx.conf top to bottom” is a debugging path almost anyone can follow. Traefik’s dynamic labels plus dashboard plus provider config is a different mental model, and if you’ve never used it before, that’s exactly the wrong time to learn it.

The comparison

The actual recommendation

If you’re running a self-hosted PaaS (Dokploy, Coolify) or managing more than a handful of apps that come and go, use Traefik — it’s what those tools already default to, and fighting that default to bolt on nginx instead is more work for no real gain. If you’re hand-rolling a Docker Compose setup for one or two long-lived services and value being able to read the entire routing config in one file, nginx is the less surprising choice, and there’s nothing wrong with picking boring on purpose.

Don’t run both unless you have a specific reason — like nginx handling a legacy static site while Traefik takes everything else. Two reverse proxies on one host is two places a routing bug can hide.