head to head · open source
nginx vs FastTunnel
nginx has 31,802 GitHub stars, 8,309 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. FastTunnel has 1,702 stars, 341 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 22 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,769% (31,802 vs 1,702 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; FastTunnel is written in C# under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, FastTunnel 20%. nginx 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 | FastTunnel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C# |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 341 |
| 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 FastTunnel if
- You want the FastTunnel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and FastTunnel 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 FastTunnel
FastTunnel is a cross platform intranet penetration framework written in C that lets developers and operators expose services running on machines behind NAT to the public internet.
read the full FastTunnel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or FastTunnel more popular?
nginx has 31,802 GitHub stars and FastTunnel has 1,702. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and FastTunnel free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and FastTunnel under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and FastTunnel?
nginx is written in C and FastTunnel in C#. 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 FastTunnel?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,802 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose FastTunnel if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.