Angie vs River
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
River
Configurable reverse proxy from the Pingora project
| Feature | Angie | River |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Language | C | Rust |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | binary, source |
| GitHub stars | ★ 2,537 | ★ 2,351 |
| First released | 2022 | 2024 |
| Replaces | nginx | nginx, HAProxy |
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 River if…
- Released under the Apache-2.0 license
- Active community (2.4k GitHub stars)
- Written in Rust
- Tiny footprint — runs in 64 MB RAM
Frequently asked questions
Is Angie or River better?
Neither is universally better. Angie has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Angie and River free and open-source?
Yes. Angie is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and River under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Angie and River with Docker?
Angie: yes. River: check the project docs for container support.