head to head · open source
nginx vs cloudflared
nginx has 31,698 GitHub stars, 8,306 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. cloudflared has 15,829 stars, 1,451 forks, 545 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 100% (31,698 vs 15,829 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; cloudflared is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, cloudflared 9%. cloudflared was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (reverse-proxy), 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 | cloudflared | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 16K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 cloudflared if
- You want the cloudflared 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 cloudflared 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 cloudflared
cloudflared is the open source command line client and tunneling daemon for Cloudflare Tunnel, a Go program under the Apache 2.0 licence that proxies traffic from the Cloudflare network to your origins so a webserver can stay closed to the public internet, and it is aimed at operators, platform teams and developers who need to publish HTTP services or reach private origins without opening inbound firewall ports.
read the full cloudflared overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or cloudflared more popular?
nginx has 31,698 GitHub stars and cloudflared has 15,829. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and cloudflared free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and cloudflared under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and cloudflared?
nginx is written in C and cloudflared 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 cloudflared?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,698 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose cloudflared if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.