SHSelfHostIndex

Ingress-NGINX vs Pangolin

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?
IN Ingress-NGINX Kubernetes ingress controller using NGINX VS PA Pangolin Self-hosted tunneled reverse proxy with identity access
FeatureIngress-NGINXPangolin
CategoryReverse Proxy & GatewaysReverse Proxy & Gateways
LicenseApache-2.0AGPL-3.0
LanguageGoTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB512 MB
Deploymentkubernetes, helmdocker
GitHub stars★ 19,485★ 22,062
First released20162024
ReplacesAWS ALB IngressCloudflare Tunnel

Why pick each one

Choose Ingress-NGINX if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 19.5k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
Ingress-NGINX details

Choose Pangolin if…

  • Released under the AGPL-3.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 22.1k GitHub stars
  • Written in TypeScript
Pangolin details

Frequently asked questions

Is Ingress-NGINX or Pangolin better?

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

Are Ingress-NGINX and Pangolin free and open-source?

Yes. Ingress-NGINX is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Pangolin under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Ingress-NGINX and Pangolin with Docker?

Ingress-NGINX: check the project docs for container support. Pangolin: yes.

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