head to head · open source
nginx vs pdns
nginx has 32,069 GitHub stars, 8,389 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pdns has 4,514 stars, 1,036 forks, 932 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 610% (32,069 vs 4,514 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; pdns is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, pdns 23%. 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 | pdns | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 4.5K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | C | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-11-05 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 pdns if
- You want the pdns feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and pdns 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 pdns
PowerDNS is copyright © by PowerDNS.COM BV and lots of contributors, using the GNU GPLv2 license (see NOTICE for the exact license and exception used). All documentation can be found on This file may lag behind at times. For most recent updates, always check Another good place to look for information is: To file bugs, head towards: But please check if the issue is already reported there first. DOCKER This README is mirrored from GitHub to dockerhub. For information about our Docker images, please refer to SOURCE CODE / GIT Source code is available on GitHub: This repository contains the sources for the PowerDNS…
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or pdns more popular?
nginx has 32,069 GitHub stars and pdns has 4,514. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and pdns free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and pdns under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and pdns?
nginx is written in C and pdns in C++. 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 pdns?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,069 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose pdns if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.