head to head · open source
nginx vs Modlishka
nginx has 32,104 GitHub stars, 8,399 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Modlishka has 5,443 stars, 960 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 490% (32,104 vs 5,443 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 | 2026-11-09 | 2026-08-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 960 |
| 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 (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 Modlishka
..Modlishka.. Modlishka is an open source penetration testing tool that acts as a man in the middle proxy. It introduced a new technical approach to handling browser based HTTP traffic flow, which allows it to transparently proxy multi domain destination traffic, both TLS and non TLS, over a single domain, without requiring the installation of any additional certificate on the client. In 2019, Modlishka was the first publicly released research tool to demonstrate a novel Adversary in the Middle (AitM) technique capable of bypassing many common 2FA implementations — with the goal of raising awareness and…
read the full Modlishka overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or Modlishka more popular?
nginx has 32,104 GitHub stars and Modlishka has 5,443. 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 (32,104 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.