head to head · open source
nginx vs vulcain
nginx has 31,746 GitHub stars, 8,311 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vulcain has 3,595 stars, 103 forks, 28 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 783% (31,746 vs 3,595 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 | 2026-09-28 | 2026-08-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 103 |
| 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 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 vulcain
Vulcain is an open source protocol and gateway server, written in Go and released under AGPL 3.0, that turns any existing web API into a client driven REST API by using Preload hints and the 103 Early Hints status code; it is intended for API developers and platform teams who want precise control over which related resources a client fetches without abandoning REST, HTTP caching, or their existing HTTP infrastructure.
read the full vulcain overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or vulcain more popular?
nginx has 31,746 GitHub stars and vulcain has 3,595. 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 (31,746 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.