head to head · open source
nginx vs gost
nginx has 32,069 GitHub stars, 8,389 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gost has 7,808 stars, 847 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 311% (32,069 vs 7,808 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; gost is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, gost 11%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 6 topic tags (http, http2, http3, https), 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 | gost | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 7.8K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 847 |
| 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 gost if
- You want the gost feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gost 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…
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About gost
GO Simple Tunnel GO语言实现的安全隧道 功能特性 [x] 多端口监听 [x] 多级转发链 [x] 多协议支持 [x] TCP/UDP端口转发 [x] 反向代理和隧道 [x] TCP/UDP透明代理 [x] DNS解析和代理 [x] TUN/TAP设备与TUN2SOCKS [x] 负载均衡 [x] 路由控制 [x] 准入控制 [x] 限速限流 [x] 插件系统 [x] Prometheus监控指标 [x] 动态配置 [x] Web API [x] GUI/WebUI 概览 GOST作为隧道有三种主要使用方式。 正向代理 作为代理服务访问网络，可以组合使用多种协议组成转发链进行转发。 端口转发 将一个服务的端口映射到另外一个服务的端口，同样可以组合使用多种协议组成转发链进行转发。 反向代理 利用隧道和内网穿透将内网服务暴露到公网访问。 下载安装 二进制文件 系统包（DEB/RPM） 从 Releases 下载对应架构的安装包（ amd64 、 amd64v3 、 arm64 ）： amd64v3 包需要支持 AVX2 的 CPU（x86 64 v3），否则请使用 amd64 。 安装包附带 systemd 服务，但不会自动启用：先创建 /etc/gost/gost.yml （示例见 /usr/share/doc/gost/examples/gost.yml ），再执行 sudo systemctl…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or gost more popular?
nginx has 32,069 GitHub stars and gost has 7,808. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and gost free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and gost under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and gost?
nginx is written in C and gost 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 gost?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,069 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose gost if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.