head to head · open source
nginx vs nginx-proxy
nginx has 31,683 GitHub stars, 8,304 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. nginx-proxy has 19,914 stars, 3,044 forks, 327 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 59% (31,683 vs 19,914 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; nginx-proxy is written in Python under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, nginx-proxy 15%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (nginx, 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 | nginx-proxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 20K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| 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 nginx-proxy if
- You want the nginx-proxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and nginx-proxy 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 nginx-proxy
nginx proxy is an automated Nginx reverse proxy for Docker that watches containers start and stop and rewrites its own proxy configuration in response, and it is for anyone running containerised services who needs hostname based routing without hand editing nginx configuration files.
read the full nginx-proxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or nginx-proxy more popular?
nginx has 31,683 GitHub stars and nginx-proxy has 19,914. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and nginx-proxy free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and nginx-proxy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and nginx-proxy?
nginx is written in C and nginx-proxy 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 nginx-proxy?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,683 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose nginx-proxy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.