head to head · open source
nginx vs xfrpc
nginx has 31,960 GitHub stars, 8,282 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. xfrpc has 842 stars, 127 forks, 30 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. nginx leads on adoption by 3,696% (31,960 vs 842 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; xfrpc is written in C under GPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, xfrpc 15%. nginx 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 | xfrpc | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 842 |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-23 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 127 |
| 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 xfrpc if
- You want the xfrpc feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and xfrpc 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 xfrpc
What is xfrpc The xfrpc project is an implementation of frp client written in C language for OpenWRT and IOT system. The main motivation of this project is to provide a lightweight solution for devices with limited resources such as OpenWRT devices which often have limited ROM and RAM space. The project aims to provide a frp client that uses less space and memory than other available options. Development Status xfrpc partially compitable with latest frp release feature, It targets to fully compatible with latest frp release. the following table is detail compatible feature (vs official frpc / frp v0.71)…
read the full xfrpc overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or xfrpc more popular?
nginx has 31,960 GitHub stars and xfrpc has 842. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and xfrpc free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and xfrpc under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and xfrpc?
nginx is written in C and xfrpc in C. 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 xfrpc?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,960 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose xfrpc if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.