head to head · open source
nginx vs awl
nginx has 32,082 GitHub stars, 8,393 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. awl has 761 stars, 53 forks, 35 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 4,116% (32,082 vs 761 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%. awl 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 | ★ 761 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 53 |
| 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 (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 awl
Table of contents About Why Anywherelan Features Screenshots How it works Security Reproducible builds Installation The web UI Android Windows ( awl tray ) macOS Linux desktop ( awl tray ) Linux server ( awl ) Connecting devices Using devices as SOCKS5 proxy VPN gateway (full tunnel exit node) Configuration Config file location Example config Monitoring Terminal based client Common examples Upgrading Platform notes & known limitations Contributing License About Anywherelan (awl for brevity) is a peer to peer mesh VPN for connecting your own devices to each other, at the IP level, from wherever they are. A laptop…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or awl more popular?
nginx has 32,082 GitHub stars and awl has 761. 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 (32,082 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.