head to head · open source
caddy vs nginx
caddy has 75,840 GitHub stars, 4,970 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nginx has 31,681 stars, 8,302 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. caddy leads on adoption by 139% (75,840 vs 31,681 stars). caddy is written in Go under Apache-2.0; nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. caddy has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, nginx 26%. caddy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (http, http3, https, reverse-proxy), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| caddy | nginx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 8.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caddy if
- You weight community size — 76K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nginx if
- You want the nginx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and nginx fits your workflow better
About caddy
Caddy is a Go based, Apache 2.0 licensed HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3 web server and reverse proxy that obtains and renews TLS certificates automatically by default, built for operators and teams who want every site on HTTPS without maintaining a separate certificate workflow.
read the full caddy overview →
About nginx
NGINX is the official open source repository for the NGINX web server and its load balancer, reverse proxy, API gateway and content cache roles, written in C under the BSD 2 Clause licence and aimed at system administrators, DevOps engineers and platform teams who need to serve, balance and protect their own HTTP traffic.
read the full nginx overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or nginx more popular?
caddy has 75,840 GitHub stars and nginx has 31,681. caddy has the larger community by that measure.
Are caddy and nginx free?
Both are open source. caddy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and nginx under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caddy and nginx?
caddy is written in Go and nginx in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, caddy or nginx?
Choose caddy if you want the larger community (75,840 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose nginx if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.