head to head · open source
nginx vs gately
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars, 8,392 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. gately has 505 stars, 54 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped today. nginx leads on adoption by 6,260% (32,120 vs 505 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; gately is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, gately 11%. gately 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 | gately | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 505 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 54 |
| 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 gately if
- You want the gately 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 gately 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 gately
Website · Quick start · Install guide · Docs · Download · Changelog English 简体中文 繁體中文 日本語 한국어 Español Français Deutsch Русский Português (Brasil) DNS and NAT traversal, reverse proxy and HTTPS certificates, WAF and intrusion prevention, single sign on and file sharing: everything your home network and servers need at the edge, managed from one console. Run it on a NAS, a soft router or a cloud server and set it all up in your browser. Open source under Apache 2.0; your config and data stay on your own device, and nothing is collected or reported. fnOS users: Gately ships as a native fnOS app. It plugs into the…
read the full gately overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or gately more popular?
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars and gately has 505. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and gately free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and gately under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and gately?
nginx is written in C and gately 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 gately?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,120 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gately if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.