head to head · open source
nginx vs coredns
nginx has 31,681 GitHub stars, 8,302 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. coredns has 14,329 stars, 2,532 forks, 282 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 121% (31,681 vs 14,329 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; coredns is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, coredns 18%. coredns 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 | coredns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 14K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| 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 coredns if
- You want the coredns 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 coredns 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 coredns
CoreDNS is a CNCF graduated DNS server and forwarder written in Go that resolves queries through a chain of plugins, aimed at platform and infrastructure engineers who run DNS for Kubernetes clusters, service discovery, or authoritative zones and need to extend its behaviour without forking the core.
read the full coredns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or coredns more popular?
nginx has 31,681 GitHub stars and coredns has 14,329. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and coredns free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and coredns under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and coredns?
nginx is written in C and coredns 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 coredns?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,681 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose coredns if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.