head to head · open source
nginx vs numa
nginx has 31,746 GitHub stars, 8,311 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. numa has 1,513 stars, 107 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 1,998% (31,746 vs 1,513 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%. nginx 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 | ★ 1.5K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 107 |
| 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 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 numa
numa is a portable DNS resolver written in Rust and shipped as a single roughly 8 MB binary, aimed at developers, self hosters and privacy conscious laptop users who want ad blocking, .numa local service names, hostname overrides and ODoH encrypted upstream queries without a cloud account or a Raspberry Pi.
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or numa more popular?
nginx has 31,746 GitHub stars and numa has 1,513. 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 (31,746 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose numa if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.