head to head · open source
nginx vs vulcain
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars, 8,392 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. vulcain has 3,593 stars, 102 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. nginx leads on adoption by 794% (32,120 vs 3,593 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; vulcain is written in Go under AGPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, vulcain 3%. nginx was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (http2, http3), 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 | vulcain | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.4K | ⑂ 102 |
| 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 vulcain if
- You want the vulcain feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and vulcain 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 vulcain
Vulcain is a brand new protocol using Preload hints and the 103 Early Hints status code to create fast and idiomatic client driven REST APIs. An open source gateway server (a module for the Caddy web server), which you can put on top of any existing web API to instantly turn it into a Vulcain compatible API is also provided! It supports hypermedia APIs (e.g. any API created with API Platform) but also any "legacy" API by documenting its relations using OpenAPI. [tabs] Preload Preload + Early Hints Server push [/tabs] Grab What You Need... Burn The REST! Introduction Pushing Relations Filtering Resources Gateway…
read the full vulcain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or vulcain more popular?
nginx has 32,120 GitHub stars and vulcain has 3,593. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and vulcain free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and vulcain under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and vulcain?
nginx is written in C and vulcain 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 vulcain?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (32,120 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose vulcain if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.