head to head · open source
nginx vs node-dns
nginx has 31,800 GitHub stars, 8,307 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. node-dns has 591 stars, 80 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 5,281% (31,800 vs 591 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; node-dns is written in JavaScript under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, node-dns 14%. 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 | node-dns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 591 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-07-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 80 |
| 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 node-dns if
- You want the node-dns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and node-dns 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 node-dns
node dns is a DNS server and client library in pure JavaScript with no dependencies, published on npm as dns2 , for Node.js developers who need to resolve or serve DNS records programmatically.
read the full node-dns overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or node-dns more popular?
nginx has 31,800 GitHub stars and node-dns has 591. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and node-dns free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and node-dns under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and node-dns?
nginx is written in C and node-dns in JavaScript. 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 node-dns?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,800 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose node-dns if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.