head to head · open source
nginx vs awl
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars, 8,310 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. awl has 684 stars, 45 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 12 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 4,538% (31,725 vs 684 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; awl is written in Go under MPL-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, awl 7%. 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 | awl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 684 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 45 |
| 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 awl if
- You want the awl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and awl 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 awl
awl (Anywherelan) is an open source, fully peer to peer mesh VPN written in Go that gives your own devices stable .awl addresses so they can reach one another at the IP level from anywhere, aimed at self hosters, small groups of friends and personal device fleets of roughly tens of machines rather than at teams.
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or awl more popular?
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars and awl has 684. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and awl free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and awl under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and awl?
nginx is written in C and awl 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 awl?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,725 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose awl if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.