head to head · open source
nginx vs rust-rpxy
nginx has 31,978 GitHub stars, 8,311 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. rust-rpxy has 781 stars, 68 forks, 17 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 3,994% (31,978 vs 781 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; rust-rpxy is written in Rust under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, rust-rpxy 9%. rust-rpxy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (http, http2, http3, https), 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 | rust-rpxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 781 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-10-27 |
| 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 rust-rpxy if
- You want the rust-rpxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rust-rpxy 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 rust-rpxy
rpxy: A simple and ultrafast reverse proxy serving multiple domain names with TLS termination, written in Rust Work in progress project that is being evolved. [!NOTE] This project is an HTTP (i.e., Layer 7) reverse proxy. If you are looking for a TCP/UDP (i.e., Layer 4) reverse proxy, please check my other project rpxy l4 . [!NOTE] If rpxy and our other projects like rpxy l4 are useful for you and your organization, please consider sponsoring us on GitHub Sponsors to help sustain the project. We are also open to any kind of support, including donations and commercial agreements. Introduction rpxy [ahr pik see]…
read the full rust-rpxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or rust-rpxy more popular?
nginx has 31,978 GitHub stars and rust-rpxy has 781. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and rust-rpxy free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and rust-rpxy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and rust-rpxy?
nginx is written in C and rust-rpxy 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 rust-rpxy?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,978 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose rust-rpxy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.