head to head · open source
nginx vs lightway-core
nginx has 31,735 GitHub stars, 8,308 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. lightway-core has 626 stars, 72 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 4,969% (31,735 vs 626 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; lightway-core is written in C under GPL-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, lightway-core 12%. 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 | lightway-core | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 626 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-25 | 2026-04-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 72 |
| 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 lightway-core if
- You want the lightway-core feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and lightway-core 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 lightway-core
Lightway Core is a small, multi platform C library published by ExpressVPN that provides the foundational components of a virtual private network protocol, written for developers, researchers, and VPN operators who want to build on or study the protocol behind ExpressVPN's Lightway.
read the full lightway-core overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or lightway-core more popular?
nginx has 31,735 GitHub stars and lightway-core has 626. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and lightway-core free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and lightway-core under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and lightway-core?
nginx is written in C and lightway-core 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 lightway-core?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,735 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose lightway-core if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.