head to head · open source
nginx vs blocky
nginx has 31,698 GitHub stars, 8,306 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. blocky has 6,965 stars, 305 forks, 51 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 355% (31,698 vs 6,965 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; blocky is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, blocky 4%. blocky 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 | blocky | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 305 |
| 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 blocky if
- You want the blocky feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and blocky 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 blocky
Blocky is a fast, lightweight DNS proxy and ad blocker written in Go that runs on a local network, blocking ad, malware and other unwanted domains for every device that sends its DNS queries to it.
read the full blocky overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or blocky more popular?
nginx has 31,698 GitHub stars and blocky has 6,965. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and blocky free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and blocky under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and blocky?
nginx is written in C and blocky 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 blocky?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,698 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose blocky if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.