head to head · open source
nginx vs sshpiper
nginx has 31,884 GitHub stars, 8,313 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. sshpiper has 1,331 stars, 170 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped today. nginx leads on adoption by 2,295% (31,884 vs 1,331 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; sshpiper is written in Go under MIT. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, sshpiper 13%. sshpiper 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 | sshpiper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 170 |
| 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 sshpiper if
- You want the sshpiper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sshpiper 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 sshpiper
sshpiper is a Go reverse proxy for sshd that routes SSH, SCP and port forwarding sessions from a downstream client to upstream SSH servers, built for operators who want a bastion layer they control sitting in front of existing hosts.
read the full sshpiper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or sshpiper more popular?
nginx has 31,884 GitHub stars and sshpiper has 1,331. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and sshpiper free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and sshpiper under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and sshpiper?
nginx is written in C and sshpiper 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 sshpiper?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,884 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose sshpiper if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.