head to head · open source
nginx vs pivpn
nginx has 32,045 GitHub stars, 8,387 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. pivpn has 8,063 stars, 683 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 297% (32,045 vs 8,063 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; pivpn is written in Shell under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, pivpn 8%. 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 | pivpn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 8.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 683 |
| 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 pivpn if
- You want the pivpn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and pivpn 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 pivpn
[!WARNING] PiVPN is maintained on a best effort basis, please read more about it here. Previous announcement is here. PIVPN.IO DOCUMENTATION PiVPN is a set of shell scripts developed to easily turn your Raspberry Pi (TM) into a VPN server using two free, open source protocols: WireGuard OpenVPN This script's primary mission in life is to allow a user to have as cost effective as possible VPN at home without being a technical wizard, hence the design of PiVPN to work on a Raspberry Pi ($35) with a one command installer followed by easy management of the VPN with the 'pivpn' command. That being said... PiVPN…
read the full pivpn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or pivpn more popular?
nginx has 32,045 GitHub stars and pivpn has 8,063. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and pivpn free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and pivpn under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and pivpn?
nginx is written in C and pivpn in Shell. 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 pivpn?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,045 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose pivpn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.