head to head · open source
nginx vs hestiacp
nginx has 32,064 GitHub stars, 8,388 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. hestiacp has 4,564 stars, 956 forks, 146 open issues and last shipped today. nginx leads on adoption by 603% (32,064 vs 4,564 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; hestiacp is written in Shell under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, hestiacp 21%. hestiacp was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (nginx), 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 | hestiacp | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-11-05 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 956 |
| 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 hestiacp if
- You want the hestiacp feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and hestiacp 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 hestiacp
Hestia Control Panel Lightweight and powerful control panel for the modern web Latest stable release: Version 1.10.5 View Changelog HestiaCP.com Documentation Forum Welcome! Hestia Control Panel is designed to provide administrators an easy to use web and command line interface, enabling them to quickly deploy and manage web domains, mail accounts, DNS zones, and databases from one central dashboard without the hassle of manually deploying and configuring individual components or services. Donate Bitcoin : bc1q48jt5wg5jaj8g9zy7c3j03cv57j2m2u5anlutu Ethereum : 0xfF3Dd2c889bd0Ff73d8085B84A314FC7c88e5D51 Binance…
read the full hestiacp overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or hestiacp more popular?
nginx has 32,064 GitHub stars and hestiacp has 4,564. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and hestiacp free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and hestiacp under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and hestiacp?
nginx is written in C and hestiacp in Shell. 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 hestiacp?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,064 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose hestiacp if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.