head to head · open source
nginx vs proxelar
nginx has 31,927 GitHub stars, 8,292 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. proxelar has 1,084 stars, 68 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 2,845% (31,927 vs 1,084 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; proxelar is written in Rust under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, proxelar 6%. nginx 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 | proxelar | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-21 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 68 |
| 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 proxelar if
- You want the proxelar feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and proxelar 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 proxelar
Proxelar A scriptable local traffic workbench for HTTP, HTTPS, and WebSocket debugging. Capture, inspect, intercept, replay, and rewrite traffic from your terminal or browser. What is Proxelar? Proxelar is a single binary MITM proxy for developers who need to see and change what an app is doing on the wire without running a full security suite. It is useful for debugging APIs, inspecting browser or mobile traffic, testing WebSocket clients, injecting headers, mocking local services, replaying captured requests, and automating request/response transforms with Lua. Proxelar is intentionally developer oriented…
read the full proxelar overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or proxelar more popular?
nginx has 31,927 GitHub stars and proxelar has 1,084. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and proxelar free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and proxelar under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and proxelar?
nginx is written in C and proxelar 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 proxelar?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,927 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose proxelar if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.