Is SquidGuard still maintained?

No. SquidGuard's last release was in 2009 and it is effectively unmaintained. It still works for basic blacklist filtering on top of Squid, but it receives no updates, and the community blacklists it relied on have largely gone stale, so most teams look for a maintained alternative.

What is a good self-hosted alternative to SquidGuard?

EnforceGate vX is a maintained, self-hosted secure web gateway that does what teams used SquidGuard for — URL and category filtering, allow/deny policies, malicious-domain blocking — but with plain-text git-backed policies, zero-downtime live reload, an interactive and scriptable CLI, signed images and vendor support. It runs alongside Squid, so you keep the proxy and replace the dead filtering layer.

Can I keep using Squid?

Yes. EnforceGate ships and builds on Squid; the connector forwards each request to the EnforceGate engine for a verdict. You keep your Squid proxy and replace SquidGuard's unmaintained filtering with a maintained, supported engine.

SquidGuard alternative

A self-hosted SquidGuard alternative

SquidGuard hasn't shipped a release since 2009. EnforceGate vX is the maintained, supported way to filter web traffic on your own network — plain-text policies, live reload and category filtering — and it runs alongside the Squid proxy you already know.

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Why teams move on from SquidGuard

SquidGuard still works for simple blacklist filtering on top of Squid, but it is a legacy project that is long dead — its last release was in 2009. That means no security updates, blacklists that have largely gone stale, and a lot of manual list-wrangling and Squid config to keep a real web filter running. If you're searching for a SquidGuard alternative, you're usually after something maintained, easier to operate, and still self-hosted.

What EnforceGate gives you instead

EnforceGate vX is a self-hosted web content filter (a secure web gateway) that does what you used SquidGuard for — allow/deny by URL, domain or category, block malicious and phishing domains, filter employee or student internet access — but as a maintained, supported product:

Maintained & supported — regular releases, signed images, a Swiss engineer to call
Plain-text policies, git-backed with diff, blame and rollback
Zero-downtime live reload — no restart to change what's blocked
Interactive + scriptable CLI (Cisco IOS / Juniper Junos-style)
Category filtering from lists you control, refreshed automatically
Runs alongside Squid — keep the proxy, replace the dead filter
Scales to ~150 million rules, matched on-box, no cloud
Still self-hosted — traffic and logs never leave your network

SquidGuard vs. EnforceGate vX

	EnforceGate vX	SquidGuard
Maintenance	Actively developed & supported	Unmaintained (last release 2009)
Policy management	Plain-text, git-backed (diff / blame / rollback)	Blacklist files + Squid config
Apply changes	Zero-downtime live reload	Rebuild DB & reload Squid
Operator interface	Interactive + scriptable CLI	Config files only
Scale	~150M rules, matched on-box	Degrades on large blacklists
Supply chain	Signed, integrity-checked images	Assemble & trust it yourself
Self-hosted	Yes — no cloud	Yes

Coming from Squid + SquidGuard? EnforceGate builds on Squid, so you don't rip anything out — you keep the proxy your users already point at and swap the unmaintained SquidGuard layer for a maintained engine. See the full vendor comparison or read how it's managed and priced.

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