SHSelfHostIndex

FrankenPHP vs NPS

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?
FR FrankenPHP Modern PHP application server built on Caddy VS NP NPS Lightweight proxy server for intranet penetration
FeatureFrankenPHPNPS
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseMITGPL-3.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB64 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 11,275★ 34,157
First released20222019
Replacesnginx, Apache HTTP Serverngrok

Why pick each one

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
FrankenPHP details

Choose NPS if…

  • Released under the GPL-3.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 34.2k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
NPS details

Frequently asked questions

Is FrankenPHP or NPS better?

Neither is universally better. NPS has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are FrankenPHP and NPS free and open-source?

Yes. FrankenPHP is licensed under MIT and NPS under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run FrankenPHP and NPS with Docker?

FrankenPHP: yes. NPS: yes.

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