head to head · open source
nginx vs Modlishka
nginx has 31,735 GitHub stars, 8,308 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Modlishka has 5,415 stars, 959 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 486% (31,735 vs 5,415 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; Modlishka is written in Go under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, Modlishka 18%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (reverse-proxy), 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 | Modlishka | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-25 | 2026-08-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 959 |
| 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 Modlishka if
- You want the Modlishka feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and Modlishka 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 Modlishka
Modlishka is an open source, GPL 3.0 licensed man in the middle reverse proxy written in Go, intended for authorised security researchers and professional penetration testers who study how browser based authentication and two factor schemes can be bypassed.
read the full Modlishka overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or Modlishka more popular?
nginx has 31,735 GitHub stars and Modlishka has 5,415. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and Modlishka free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Modlishka under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and Modlishka?
nginx is written in C and Modlishka 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 Modlishka?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,735 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Modlishka if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.