head to head · open source
nginx vs DNS-collector
nginx has 31,802 GitHub stars, 8,309 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. DNS-collector has 570 stars, 89 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 5,479% (31,802 vs 570 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; DNS-collector is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, DNS-collector 16%. DNS-collector 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 | DNS-collector | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 570 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 89 |
| 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 DNS-collector if
- You want the DNS-collector feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and DNS-collector 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 DNS-collector
DNS collector is a lightweight, open source DNS telemetry pipeline in Go that captures queries and responses from DNS servers and forwards normalized, enriched events to monitoring, analytics, and security systems.
read the full DNS-collector overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or DNS-collector more popular?
nginx has 31,802 GitHub stars and DNS-collector has 570. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and DNS-collector free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and DNS-collector under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and DNS-collector?
nginx is written in C and DNS-collector 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 DNS-collector?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,802 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose DNS-collector if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.