What is NGINX used for?

NGINX is a web server, reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway and content cache, free under a BSD-style license. It is a good fit for serving static sites and web applications, reverse proxy in front of application servers, and load balancing and caching for busy sites.

Is NGINX open source?

Yes. NGINX is open source under the BSD-2-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at nginx/nginx and is written mainly in C.

Yes. NGINX is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host NGINX?

Yes. NGINX can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is NGINX an alternative to?

NGINX is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront and Akamai. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare include BunkerWeb, SafeLine and ModSecurity.

Is NGINX actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to NGINX was on 30 September 2026. The project has 32k stars on GitHub.

NGINX: open-source alternative to Cloudflare, Fastly

About NGINX

NGINX, pronounced engine x, is a web server that also serves as a reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway and content cache. The official open source repository is written in C and distributed under a simplified two-clause BSD license. Enterprise distributions, commercial support and training are sold separately by F5, Inc.

NGINX is installed software with binary packages for the major operating systems and Linux distributions, in stable and mainline versions, plus Windows executables and dynamic modules. Typical tasks covered by the project's introduction include installing SSL certificates and enabling TLS, load balancing, rate limiting and content caching. Topics on the repository list TCP, UDP and mail proxying, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 and QUIC. You can also build from source, and the full documentation includes a beginners guide, development guide and directive reference.

Key features

Web server and reverse proxy
Load balancing across upstream servers
TLS termination, HTTP/2 and HTTP/3
Rate limiting and content caching
TCP, UDP and mail proxying
Stable and mainline release channels

Good fit for

→Serving static sites and web applications
→Reverse proxy in front of application servers
→Load balancing and caching for busy sites

Built with: C
Tags: web-server; reverse-proxy; load-balancer; http; tls; api-gateway; caching; nginx

NGINX: questions and answers

What is NGINX used for?: NGINX is a web server, reverse proxy, load balancer, API gateway and content cache, free under a BSD-style license. It is a good fit for serving static sites and web applications, reverse proxy in front of application servers, and load balancing and caching for busy sites.
Is NGINX open source?: Yes. NGINX is open source under the BSD-2-Clause licence. Its source code is on GitHub at nginx/nginx and is written mainly in C.
Is NGINX free?: Yes. NGINX is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host NGINX?: Yes. NGINX can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is NGINX an alternative to?: NGINX is an open-source alternative to Cloudflare, Fastly, Amazon CloudFront and Akamai. Other open-source alternatives to Cloudflare include BunkerWeb, SafeLine and ModSecurity.
Is NGINX actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to NGINX was on 30 September 2026. The project has 32k stars on GitHub.