head to head · open source
nginx vs angie
nginx has 32,122 GitHub stars, 8,396 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. angie has 2,618 stars, 113 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 1,127% (32,122 vs 2,618 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; angie is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, angie 4%. angie was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 7 topic tags (http, http3, https, load-balancer), 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 | angie | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 113 |
| 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 angie if
- You want the angie 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 angie 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 angie
.. image:: misc/logo.gif :alt: Angie logo :target: Angie ===== Angie /ˈendʒi/ is an efficient, powerful, and scalable web server that was forked from nginx to act as a drop in replacement, so you can use existing setups without major changes to module layout or configuration. The project was conceived by ex devs from the original nginx team to venture beyond the earlier vision. Getting Started To start using Angie , see the official documentation in English , Russian , Chinese , Spanish , or Portuguese : Installation ( ru , cn , es , pt ) Runtime configuration ( ru , cn , es , pt ) Troubleshooting and feedback…
read the full angie overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or angie more popular?
nginx has 32,122 GitHub stars and angie has 2,618. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and angie free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and angie under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and angie?
nginx is written in C and angie 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, nginx or angie?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,122 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose angie if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.