head to head · open source
nginx vs piko
nginx has 31,781 GitHub stars, 8,309 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. piko has 2,194 stars, 89 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 1,349% (31,781 vs 2,194 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; piko is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, piko 4%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (http, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| nginx | piko | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.2K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 89 |
| 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 piko if
- You want the piko feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and piko 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 piko
Piko is an open source reverse proxy and tunneling server in Go that lets you reach services with no public route by having them open outbound connections, and it is aimed at teams that need to serve production traffic or expose internal services from Kubernetes.
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or piko more popular?
nginx has 31,781 GitHub stars and piko has 2,194. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and piko free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and piko under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and piko?
nginx is written in C and piko 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 piko?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,781 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose piko if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.