Implementations

Official Shadowsocks implementations under active maintenance:

Servers

• shadowsocks: The original Python implementation.
• shadowsocks-libev: Lightweight C implementation for embedded devices and low end boxes. Very small footprint (several megabytes) for thousands of connections.
• shadowsocks-go: Go implementation with multi-port, multi-password, user management and traffic statistics support for commercial deployments.
• go-shadowsocks2: Another Go implementation focusing on core features and code reusability.

Feature comparison

              | [ss]      | [ss-libev]  |  [ss-go]  | [go-ss2]

----------------- | --------- | ----------- | ----------|------ TCP Fast Open | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ Multiuser | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ Management API | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ Redirect mode | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ Tunnel mode | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ UDP Relay | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ AEAD ciphers | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ Plugin | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗

Clients

• shadowsocks-android: Android client.
• shadowsocks-windows: Windows client.
• shadowsocksX-NG: MacOS client.
• shadowsocks-qt5: Cross-platform client for Windows/MacOS/Linux.

Feature comparison

               | [ss-win] | [ssx-ng] | [ss-qt5] | [ss-android]

------------------ | --------- | -------------- | ----- | ------- System Proxy | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓
CHNRoutes | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓
PAC Configuration | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗
Profile Switching | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓
QR Code Scan | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓
QR Code Generation | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓