head to head · open source
nginx vs acme-dns
nginx has 32,082 GitHub stars, 8,393 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. acme-dns has 2,874 stars, 307 forks, 192 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,016% (32,082 vs 2,874 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; acme-dns is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, acme-dns 11%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | acme-dns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-06-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 307 |
| 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 acme-dns if
- You want the acme-dns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and acme-dns 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 acme-dns
acme dns A simplified DNS server with a RESTful HTTP API to provide a simple way to automate ACME DNS challenges. Why? Many DNS servers do not provide an API to enable automation for the ACME DNS challenges. Those which do, give the keys way too much power. Leaving the keys laying around your random boxes is too often a requirement to have a meaningful process automation. Acme dns provides a simple API exclusively for TXT record updates and should be used with ACME magic "\ acme challenge" subdomain CNAME records. This way, in the unfortunate exposure of API keys, the effects are limited to the subdomain TXT…
read the full acme-dns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or acme-dns more popular?
nginx has 32,082 GitHub stars and acme-dns has 2,874. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and acme-dns free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and acme-dns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and acme-dns?
nginx is written in C and acme-dns 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 acme-dns?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,082 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose acme-dns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.