head to head · open source
nginx vs acme-dns
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars, 8,310 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. acme-dns has 2,832 stars, 304 forks, 192 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,020% (31,725 vs 2,832 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 | ★ 2.8K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-06-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 304 |
| 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 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 acme-dns
acme dns is a limited, self hosted DNS server written in Go that exposes a RESTful HTTP API for updating TXT records, letting operators automate ACME DNS 01 challenges without handing broad DNS control to their automation.
read the full acme-dns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or acme-dns more popular?
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars and acme-dns has 2,832. 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 (31,725 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.