Stop malicious web traffic before it reaches your origin.
SafeLine is an open-source, self-hosted WAF and reverse proxy for teams protecting public apps, APIs, WordPress, admin panels, and SaaS infrastructure from exploits, bots, brute force, and HTTP floods.
- 21K+
- GitHub stars
- 180K+
- installs
- 30B+
- daily requests
Verified signals, not invented customer logos.
Only public, checkable sources are shown here, with no fabricated TechCrunch quote or fake customer badge.
GitHub
Open-source traction
SafeLine's public README reports 180,000+ installations, 1,000,000+ protected websites, and 30B+ daily HTTP requests.
View sourceProduct Hunt
Public product reviews
SafeLine WAF has a public Product Hunt product and review page, useful for independent buyer research.
View sourceThe Hacker News
Media coverage
The Hacker News covered SafeLine WAF as an open-source web firewall option for application security teams.
View sourceSafeLine filters traffic before origin exposure.
Requests hit SafeLine first. It separates normal visitors from suspicious payloads, challenges bots, blocks attacks, and forwards clean traffic to your upstream app.
01
Inspect
Parse HTTP/S requests, headers, paths, payloads, and client behavior.
02
Decide
Use semantic detection, policy rules, rate limits, and bot challenges.
03
Enforce
Block hostile traffic, log events, and proxy clean requests upstream.
SafeLine understands the mess in real traffic.
WAF buyers rarely wake up wanting another dashboard. They want fewer incidents, fewer noisy alerts, and less origin exposure.
Your app logs are full of scanner noise
Suspicious query strings, exploit payloads, and odd paths keep hitting public endpoints before your team can triage them.
Bots are burning origin capacity
Scrapers, brute-force scripts, and HTTP floods make small teams spend time on abuse instead of product work.
You need control, not another black box
Hosted edge security is convenient, but self-hosted products often need local enforcement, transparent routing, and ownership.
Traditional WAF rules are hard to tune
Regex-heavy rule stacks can be noisy, brittle, and painful when developers ship fast or APIs change often.
A self-hosted shield built around HTTP reality.
SafeLine combines reverse-proxy deployment, semantic detection, bot controls, dynamic protection, and access policies into a practical open-source WAF layer.
Semantic web attack detection
Detect SQL injection, XSS, RCE, XXE, SSRF, path traversal, and command injection by understanding request context.
Reverse-proxy enforcement
Put SafeLine in front of web apps, APIs, admin panels, and WordPress sites so the origin receives cleaner traffic.
Bot challenges and rate limits
Add anti-bot challenge, authentication challenge, IP rate limiting, and abuse controls for hostile clients.
Dynamic protection
Use HTML and JavaScript dynamic protection to make scraping, replay, and tampering harder for attackers.
Web ACL and allow/block policies
Apply access control policies around sensitive paths, admin panels, APIs, and high-risk endpoints.
Self-hosted deployment
Deploy with Docker on Linux servers, cloud VMs, or lab environments without introducing a database requirement here.
SafeLine vs. Cloudflare WAF.
They solve overlapping problems, but the operating model is different. SafeLine is for teams that want self-hosted enforcement; Cloudflare is a managed global edge platform.
Lead with free. Upgrade only when the surface grows.
The free edition is the main path for this site: install it, protect an app, then evaluate paid licensing if you need larger limits or Pro-only capabilities.
Recommended
Free Edition
Start with the open-source WAF, install from the local docs page, and test it in front of one application before expanding.
$0 to start
- Self-hosted deployment
- Web attack detection
- Bot and auth challenges
- Rate limiting
- Web ACL policies
- Good fit for first production evaluation
Paid license
Use the 7-day trial when you want to evaluate Pro capabilities, higher usage needs, team workflows, and production expansion.
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Common deployment questions.
Adapted from the official deployment flow and common WAF adoption concerns.
Can I install SafeLine on Windows?
SafeLine is designed for Docker-based deployment. On Windows, the practical path is usually a Linux VM or WSL2 with Docker, while production should run on a Linux server.
Do I need Kubernetes?
No. The official deployment path is Docker-based and works well on a single Linux host. Kubernetes is optional only if your own infrastructure requires it.
Where should SafeLine sit in my architecture?
Put it in front of your web app as a reverse proxy. Visitors hit SafeLine first, SafeLine filters traffic, and clean requests are forwarded to your upstream application.
Can it protect WordPress, SaaS apps, and APIs?
Yes. The product positioning and docs focus on web applications broadly, including websites, admin panels, APIs, and common self-hosted stacks.
Is Cloudflare still useful if I use SafeLine?
Yes. Cloudflare can still provide DNS, CDN, and edge services. SafeLine is more useful when you want a self-hosted WAF layer near origin.