head to head · open source
nginx vs frpmgr
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars, 8,313 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. frpmgr has 2,053 stars, 185 forks, 21 open issues and last shipped 24 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,449% (31,793 vs 2,053 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; frpmgr is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, frpmgr 9%. 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 | frpmgr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 185 |
| 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 frpmgr if
- You want the frpmgr 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 frpmgr 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 frpmgr
FRP Manager (frpmgr) is a user friendly desktop GUI client for FRP on Windows that lets users configure, launch, and monitor reverse proxies without ever writing a configuration file.
read the full frpmgr overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or frpmgr more popular?
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars and frpmgr has 2,053. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and frpmgr free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and frpmgr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and frpmgr?
nginx is written in C and frpmgr 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 frpmgr?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,793 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose frpmgr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.