head to head · open source
nginx vs gdnsd
nginx has 31,844 GitHub stars, 8,314 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. gdnsd has 560 stars, 70 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 5,586% (31,844 vs 560 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; gdnsd is written in C under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, gdnsd 13%. 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 | gdnsd | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 560 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-05-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 70 |
| 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 gdnsd if
- You want the gdnsd feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and gdnsd 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 gdnsd
gdnsd is an authoritative only DNS server written in C, intended for operators who need high performance name service with geographic balancing and failover rather than caching or recursion.
read the full gdnsd 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 gdnsd more popular?
nginx has 31,844 GitHub stars and gdnsd has 560. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and gdnsd free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and gdnsd under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and gdnsd?
nginx is written in C and gdnsd 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 gdnsd?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,844 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gdnsd if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.