head to head · open source
nginx vs goproxy
nginx has 31,691 GitHub stars, 8,307 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. goproxy has 17,135 stars, 3,094 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 85% (31,691 vs 17,135 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; goproxy is written in Go under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, goproxy 18%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (http, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| nginx | goproxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 17K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| 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 goproxy if
- You want the goproxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goproxy fits your workflow better
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 →
About goproxy
goproxy is a GPL 3.0 licensed, Go based proxy server that provides HTTP(S), SOCKS5, ss, WebSocket, TCP and UDP proxying from a single program, intended for operators and developers who need forward, reverse, transparent, chained and NAT traversal proxying without wiring together several separate tools.
read the full goproxy overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or goproxy more popular?
nginx has 31,691 GitHub stars and goproxy has 17,135. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and goproxy free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and goproxy under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and goproxy?
nginx is written in C and goproxy 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 goproxy?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,691 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose goproxy if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.