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Shadowsocks vs Cloak: catalog facts
Shadowsocks	Cloak
Free Free and open source; you supply your own server.	Free Free and open source under the GPL-3.0 licence.
Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, Self-hosted	Self-hosted, Command line
Lightweight with low CPU and bandwidth use Clients and servers for most platforms, including routers	Server is hard to tell apart from a normal web server, even under active probing Works in front of OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, Tor and other TCP or UDP proxies
A proxy rather than a full VPN Split across many separate implementations of varying quality	Not a standalone proxy; needs a separate proxy program behind it Requires running and configuring your own server
Downloadable app, Self-hosted	Downloadable app, Self-hosted
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: GPL-3.0
No account needed	No account needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 1, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.