head to head · open source
nginx vs dns.toys
nginx has 32,104 GitHub stars, 8,399 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. dns.toys has 2,833 stars, 190 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,033% (32,104 vs 2,833 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; dns.toys is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, dns.toys 7%. nginx 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| nginx | dns.toys | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-02-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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.toys if
- You want the dns.toys feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and dns.toys 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 dns.toys
dns.toys is a DNS server that takes creative liberties with the DNS protocol to offer handy utilities and services that are easily accessible via the command line. For docs, visit www.dns.toys Sample commands Running locally Docker Or using docker compose: From source Clone the repo Copy config.sample.toml to config.toml and edit the config Make sure you have a copy of the cities15000.txt file at the root of this directory (instructions are in the config.sample.toml file) Make sure to download the wordnet from Wordnet website.(more instructions are in the config.sample.toml file) Extract the tarball and rename…
read the full dns.toys overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or dns.toys more popular?
nginx has 32,104 GitHub stars and dns.toys has 2,833. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and dns.toys free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and dns.toys under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and dns.toys?
nginx is written in C and dns.toys 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.toys?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,104 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose dns.toys if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.