head to head · open source
nginx vs mosdns
nginx has 31,721 GitHub stars, 8,311 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. mosdns has 3,749 stars, 486 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 746% (31,721 vs 3,749 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; mosdns is written in Go under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, mosdns 13%. 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 | mosdns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-02-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 486 |
| 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 mosdns if
- You want the mosdns 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 mosdns 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 mosdns
mosdns is a DNS forwarder written in Go, licensed under GPL 3.0, and aimed at people who want to run their own DNS forwarding and resolution path instead of relying on the resolver handed to them by a router, an ISP, or a third party service.
read the full mosdns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or mosdns more popular?
nginx has 31,721 GitHub stars and mosdns has 3,749. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and mosdns free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and mosdns under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and mosdns?
nginx is written in C and mosdns 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 mosdns?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,721 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose mosdns if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.