head to head · open source
frp vs nginx
frp has 110,395 GitHub stars, 15,306 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx has 32,033 stars, 8,410 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. frp leads on adoption by 245% (110,395 vs 32,033 stars). frp is written in Go under Apache-2.0; nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause. frp has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, nginx 26%. frp 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
| frp | nginx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 32K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 8.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick frp if
- You weight community size — 110K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nginx if
- You want the nginx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and nginx fits your workflow better
About frp
frp README 中文文档 Sponsors frp is an open source project with its ongoing development made possible entirely by the support of our awesome sponsors. If you'd like to join them, please consider sponsoring frp's development. Gold Sponsors High performance residential and ISP proxies for developers 90M+ residential IPs worldwide. Rotating IPs, sticky sessions, and traffic that never expires. From $0.55/GB. Use RAPID10 for 10% off. Try it for free. The complete IDE crafted for professional Go developers The sovereign cloud that puts you in control An open source, self hosted alternative to public clouds, built for…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is frp or nginx more popular?
frp has 110,395 GitHub stars and nginx has 32,033. frp has the larger community by that measure.
Are frp and nginx free?
Both are open source. frp is licensed under Apache-2.0 and nginx under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frp and nginx?
frp is written in Go and nginx 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, frp or nginx?
Choose frp if you want the larger community (110,395 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose nginx if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.