head to head · open source
nginx vs Kathara
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars, 8,313 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Kathara has 645 stars, 86 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 4,829% (31,793 vs 645 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; Kathara is written in Python under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, Kathara 13%. Kathara 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 | Kathara | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 645 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 86 |
| 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 Kathara if
- You want the Kathara feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Kathara 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 Kathara
Kathará is a lightweight, container based network emulation system for network engineers, students, and researchers who need to build, test, and demonstrate virtual networks on Docker or Kubernetes.
read the full Kathara overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or Kathara more popular?
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars and Kathara has 645. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and Kathara free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Kathara under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and Kathara?
nginx is written in C and Kathara in Python. 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 Kathara?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,793 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Kathara if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.