Anubis vs Nginx
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?
Anubis
Proof-of-work proxy to block AI scraper bots
VS
Nginx
High-performance web server and reverse proxy
| Feature | Anubis | Nginx |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | MIT | BSD-2-Clause |
| Language | Go | C |
| Setup difficulty | Easy | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 64 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary | docker, binary, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 21,230 | ★ 31,360 |
| First released | 2025 | 2004 |
| Replaces | Cloudflare Bot Management | Apache, IIS |
Why pick each one
Choose Anubis if…
- Released under the MIT license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 21.2k GitHub stars
Choose Nginx if…
- Released under the BSD-2-Clause license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 31.4k GitHub stars
- Written in C
Frequently asked questions
Is Anubis or Nginx better?
Neither is universally better. Nginx has the larger community, while Anubis is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Anubis and Nginx free and open-source?
Yes. Anubis is licensed under MIT and Nginx under BSD-2-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Anubis and Nginx with Docker?
Anubis: yes. Nginx: yes.