head to head · open source
nginx vs pivpn
nginx has 31,691 GitHub stars, 8,307 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. pivpn has 8,043 stars, 682 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 294% (31,691 vs 8,043 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 | ★ 8.0K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-08-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 682 |
| 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 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 pivpn
PiVPN is a set of open source shell scripts that turns a Raspberry Pi, or an Ubuntu or Debian server, into a self hosted VPN server running WireGuard or OpenVPN, and it is built for people who want a cost effective personal VPN at home without having to become a networking expert.
read the full pivpn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or pivpn more popular?
nginx has 31,691 GitHub stars and pivpn has 8,043. 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 (31,691 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose pivpn if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.