head to head · open source
nginx vs sliver
nginx has 32,033 GitHub stars, 8,410 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. sliver has 12,218 stars, 1,641 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 162% (32,033 vs 12,218 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; sliver is written in Go under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, sliver 13%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (http), 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 | sliver | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| 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 sliver if
- You want the sliver feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sliver 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 sliver
Sliver Sliver is an open source cross platform adversary emulation/red team framework, it can be used by organizations of all sizes to perform security testing. Sliver's implants support C2 over Mutual TLS (mTLS), WireGuard, HTTP(S), and DNS and are dynamically compiled with per binary asymmetric encryption keys. The server and client support MacOS, Windows, and Linux. Implants are supported on MacOS, Windows, and Linux (and possibly every Golang compiler target but we've not tested them all). Visit for tutorials and documentation. Features Dynamic code generation Compile time obfuscation Multiplayer mode Staged…
read the full sliver overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or sliver more popular?
nginx has 32,033 GitHub stars and sliver has 12,218. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and sliver free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and sliver under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and sliver?
nginx is written in C and sliver in Go. 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 sliver?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,033 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose sliver if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.