Which one should I pick for a new project?

I can only answer questions about fatedier/frp or nats-io/nats-server.

However, I can help you understand what each project does, their architecture, security posture, and use cases—so you can make an informed decision:

fatedier/frp — A reverse proxy for exposing local services behind NAT/firewall to the internet. Supports TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, and P2P modes. 109k stars.

nats-io/nats-server — A high-performance messaging system and event streaming platform. Used for distributed systems, microservices, and event-driven architectures. Different use case entirely.

On security & health:

• frp: Dependency security is clean (0 critical/high CVEs in direct deps per deps.dev). OpenSSF Scorecard 5.1/10; weakest in token permissions and signed releases.
• nats-server: Not assessed in your repository data, so I can't cite specific signals.

Choose based on your actual need:

• Need to tunnel/expose internal services? → frp
• Need a message broker or event streaming backbone? → nats-server

These serve fundamentally different purposes, so the choice depends on your architecture requirements, not comparative quality.

If you want to dive deeper into either project's capabilities, architecture, or reliability characteristics, I can help analyze specific aspects.

FOLLOW_UPS:

• How does frp handle authentication and security?
• What protocols does frp support beyond TCP/UDP?
• How does nats-server compare for messaging reliability?