head to head · open source
nginx vs goshs
nginx has 31,773 GitHub stars, 8,309 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goshs has 987 stars, 58 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 3,119% (31,773 vs 987 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; goshs is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, goshs 6%. 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.
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Side by side
| nginx | goshs | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 987 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 58 |
| 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 goshs if
- You want the goshs feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goshs 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 goshs
goshs is a single binary file server written in Go for red teamers, CTF players, and developers who need more capability than python3 m http.server without configuring Apache.
read the full goshs overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or goshs more popular?
nginx has 31,773 GitHub stars and goshs has 987. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and goshs free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and goshs under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and goshs?
nginx is written in C and goshs 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 goshs?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,773 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose goshs if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.