head to head · open source
caddy vs nginx
caddy has 78,660 GitHub stars, 5,232 forks, 286 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx has 32,033 stars, 8,410 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. caddy leads on adoption by 146% (78,660 vs 32,033 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 | ★ 79K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 8.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caddy if
- You weight community size — 79K 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
a project Every site on HTTPS Caddy is an extensible server platform that uses TLS by default. Releases · Documentation · Get Help Powered by Special thanks to: Warp, built for coding with multiple AI agents Available for MacOS, Linux, & Windows Menu Features Install Build from source For development With version information and/or plugins Quick start Overview Full documentation Getting help About Features Easy configuration with the Caddyfile Powerful configuration with its native JSON config Dynamic configuration with the JSON API Config adapters if you don't like JSON Automatic HTTPS by default ZeroSSL and…
read the full caddy overview →
About nginx
NGINX (pronounced "engine x" or "en jin eks") is the world's most popular Web Server, high performance Load Balancer, Reverse Proxy, API Gateway and Content Cache. NGINX is free and open source software, distributed under the terms of a simplified 2 clause BSD like license. Enterprise distributions, commercial support and training are available from F5, Inc. [!IMPORTANT] The goal of this README is to provide a basic, structured introduction to NGINX for novice users. Please refer to the full NGINX documentation for detailed information on installing, building, configuring, debugging, and more. These…
read the full nginx overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caddy or nginx more popular?
caddy has 78,660 GitHub stars and nginx has 32,033. 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 (78,660 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.