head to head · open source
nginx vs numa
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars, 8,392 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. numa has 1,980 stars, 141 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,522% (32,120 vs 1,980 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; numa is written in Rust under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, numa 7%. numa 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 | numa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 141 |
| 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 numa if
- You want the numa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and numa 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 numa
Numa DNS you own. Everywhere you go. — numa.rs A portable DNS resolver in a single binary. Block ads on any network, name your local services ( frontend.numa ), override any hostname with auto revert, and seal every outbound query with ODoH (RFC 9230) so no single party sees both who you are and what you asked — all from your laptop, no cloud account or Raspberry Pi required. Built from scratch in Rust. Zero DNS libraries. Caching, ad blocking, and local service domains out of the box. Optional recursive resolution from root nameservers with full DNSSEC chain of trust validation, plus a DNS over TLS listener for…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or numa more popular?
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars and numa has 1,980. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and numa free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and numa under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and numa?
nginx is written in C and numa in Rust. 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 numa?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,120 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose numa if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.