head to head · open source
nginx vs nps
nginx has 31,917 GitHub stars, 8,291 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nps has 1,089 stars, 156 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 2,831% (31,917 vs 1,089 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; nps is written in Go under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, nps 14%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (http), 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 | nps | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 156 |
| 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 nps if
- You want the nps 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 nps 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 nps
NPS Enhanced An enhanced and actively maintained NAT traversal and reverse proxy system with Web UI. ⭐️ Give us a star on GitHub if you like it! 中文文档 Introduction NPS is a lightweight and efficient NAT traversal and reverse proxy system for exposing services behind NAT or firewalls. It supports multiple protocols such as TCP, UDP, HTTP, HTTPS, and SOCKS5, and provides a Web management interface for convenient deployment and monitoring. Based on the original NPS project, NPS Enhanced has evolved into an actively maintained and extensively improved edition with continuous refactoring, better stability, and many…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or nps more popular?
nginx has 31,917 GitHub stars and nps has 1,089. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and nps free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and nps under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and nps?
nginx is written in C and nps 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 nps?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,917 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose nps if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.