head to head · open source
nginx vs pingap
nginx has 31,844 GitHub stars, 8,314 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. pingap has 1,390 stars, 104 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped today. nginx leads on adoption by 2,191% (31,844 vs 1,390 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; pingap is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, pingap 7%. pingap 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 | pingap | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 104 |
| 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 pingap if
- You want the pingap feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pingap 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 pingap
Pingap is a high performance, open source reverse proxy written in Rust for operators who want nginx like routing with plugin based gateway features, hot reloaded TOML configuration, and a built in web admin UI.
read the full pingap overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or pingap more popular?
nginx has 31,844 GitHub stars and pingap has 1,390. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and pingap free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and pingap under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and pingap?
nginx is written in C and pingap 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 pingap?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,844 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose pingap if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.