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?
Nginx
High-performance web server and reverse proxy
VS
Pangolin
Self-hosted tunneled reverse proxy with identity access
| Feature | Nginx | Pangolin |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Reverse Proxy & Gateways | Reverse Proxy & Gateways |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Language | C | TypeScript |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 64 MB | 512 MB |
| Deployment | docker, binary, bare-metal | docker |
| GitHub stars | ★ 31,360 | ★ 22,062 |
| First released | 2004 | 2024 |
| Replaces | Apache, IIS | Cloudflare Tunnel |
Why pick each one
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
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
Frequently asked questions
Is Nginx or Pangolin better?
Neither is universally better. Nginx has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Nginx and Pangolin free and open-source?
Yes. Nginx is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Pangolin under AGPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Nginx and Pangolin with Docker?
Nginx: yes. Pangolin: yes.