head to head · open source
nginx vs angie
nginx has 31,773 GitHub stars, 8,309 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. angie has 2,576 stars, 113 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,133% (31,773 vs 2,576 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%. nginx 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 | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 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 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 angie
Angie is a BSD 2 Clause web server written in C that acts as a drop in replacement for nginx, designed for operators who want to keep their existing configuration while gaining HTTP/3, built in ACME, and modern load balancing behaviour.
read the full angie overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or angie more popular?
nginx has 31,773 GitHub stars and angie has 2,576. 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 (31,773 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.