head to head · open source
nginx vs docktail
nginx has 31,926 GitHub stars, 8,329 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. docktail has 1,287 stars, 49 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 2,381% (31,926 vs 1,287 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; docktail is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, docktail 4%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| nginx | docktail | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 49 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nginx if
- You weight community size — 32K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick docktail if
- You want the docktail feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and docktail fits your workflow better
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 →
About docktail
🍸 DockTail Unleash your containers as Tailscale Services. DockTail watches Docker containers, reads docktail. labels, and exposes matching containers as Tailscale Services. App containers do not need published Docker ports by default; DockTail proxies directly to their Docker network IPs. Why DockTail? DockTail uses native Tailscale Services, not per container Tailscale devices. ¹ Depends on proxy and Docker network setup. ² Depends on the sidecar template and app network setup. ³ You configure how the service host reaches the backend yourself. ⁴ ScaleTail is template based, so each app usually starts from its…
read the full docktail overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or docktail more popular?
nginx has 31,926 GitHub stars and docktail has 1,287. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and docktail free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and docktail under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and docktail?
nginx is written in C and docktail in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, nginx or docktail?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,926 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose docktail if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.