head to head · open source
nginx vs trickster
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars, 8,313 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. trickster has 2,092 stars, 190 forks, 6 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 1,420% (31,793 vs 2,092 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; trickster is written in Go under Apache-2.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, trickster 9%. trickster 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| nginx | trickster | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 190 |
| 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 trickster if
- You want the trickster feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and trickster 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 trickster
Trickster is an open source Go HTTP reverse proxy cache and time series database query accelerator for operators who want faster dashboards and a hardened edge in front of HTTP services.
read the full trickster overview →
More in Infrastructure & Operations
Related comparisons
More Networking & Connectivity projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Networking & Connectivity field.
Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or trickster more popular?
nginx has 31,793 GitHub stars and trickster has 2,092. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and trickster free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and trickster under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and trickster?
nginx is written in C and trickster 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 trickster?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,793 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose trickster if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.