head to head · open source
nginx vs zoraxy
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars, 8,310 forks, 468 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zoraxy has 5,490 stars, 323 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nginx leads on adoption by 478% (31,725 vs 5,490 stars). nginx is written in C under BSD-2-Clause; zoraxy is written in HTML under AGPL-3.0. nginx has attracted 26% as many forks as stars, zoraxy 6%. 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 | zoraxy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 32K | ★ 5.5K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-24 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 323 |
| 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 zoraxy if
- You want the zoraxy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and zoraxy 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 zoraxy
Zoraxy is a general purpose HTTP reverse proxy and forwarding tool, now written in Go, aimed at homelab owners, makers, and small operations teams who need to route traffic to several self hosted services without hand maintaining proxy configuration files.
read the full zoraxy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nginx or zoraxy more popular?
nginx has 31,725 GitHub stars and zoraxy has 5,490. nginx has the larger community by that measure.
Are nginx and zoraxy free?
Both are open source. nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and zoraxy under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nginx and zoraxy?
nginx is written in C and zoraxy in HTML. 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 zoraxy?
Choose nginx if you want the larger community (31,725 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose zoraxy if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.