Angie vs FrankenPHP
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted reverse proxy & gateways options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Not the right match-up?
Angie
Drop-in nginx fork with extended features
VS
FrankenPHP
Modern PHP application server built on Caddy
| Feature | Angie | FrankenPHP |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Language | C | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,537 | ★ 11,275 |
| First released | 2022 | 2022 |
| Replaces | nginx | nginx, Apache HTTP Server |
Why pick each one
Choose Angie if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2.5k GitHub stars)
- Written in C
Choose FrankenPHP if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 11.3k GitHub stars
- Written in Go
Frequently asked questions
Is Angie or FrankenPHP better?
Neither is universally better. FrankenPHP has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Angie and FrankenPHP free and open-source?
Yes. Angie is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and FrankenPHP under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Angie and FrankenPHP with Docker?
Angie: yes. FrankenPHP: yes.