# NGINX

The official NGINX Open Source repository.

Repository: https://github.com/nginx/nginx
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/nginx
Homepage: https://nginx.org/
Language: C
License: BSD-2-Clause
License Family: permissive
Topics: content-cache, load-balancer, reverse-proxy, web-server, http, https, quic, tls, tcp-proxy-server, mail-proxy-server, udp-proxy-server, http2, http3, nginx, security
Last push: 2026-08-26T11:14:21+00:00
Link (homepage): https://nginx.org/
Link (site_page): https://nginx.org/en
Link (site_page): https://nginx.org/en/docs
Link (site_page): https://nginx.org/en/docs/faq.html
Link (site_page): https://nginx.org/en/docs/njs

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 99/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-02T17:46:02.011165+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 98, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4089, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 14, "gap_med": 20, "n_releases_24m": 28}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 31504, forks 8279 (observed 2026-08-28T04:11:56.957476+00:00)

## What it is
NGINX is a high-performance HTTP web server, reverse proxy, content cache, load balancer, API gateway, and TCP/UDP/mail proxy server written in C. It uses an event-driven architecture for low resource usage and is extensible via dynamic modules, including the njs JavaScript scripting module.

## Use cases
- serve static content for a website
- set up a reverse proxy in front of backend apps
- load balance traffic across multiple upstream servers
- terminate TLS/HTTPS with SSL certificates
- cache content to speed up a site
- rate limit incoming requests
- proxy TCP and UDP traffic
- add custom request logic with JavaScript scripting

## When to choose
- you need a battle-tested, high-performance web server or reverse proxy with low memory footprint
- you need load balancing, caching, TLS termination, and rate limiting in one tool
- you want the industry-standard ingress/proxy for production web traffic or Kubernetes

## When to avoid
- you need a full application server with built-in business logic execution rather than a proxy/static server
- you prefer config-as-code in a general-purpose language over nginx.conf directives
- you need advanced L7 features available only in the commercial NGINX Plus distribution

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: stable
- function: http-server, proxy, load-testing, caching, api-gateway, rate-limiting, middleware
- domain: web-development, backend, networking, self-hosted, apis
- platform: windows, bsd, cross-platform, self-hosted
- tags: reverse-proxy, http2, http3, quic, tls, content-cache, tcp-proxy, udp-proxy, mail-proxy, njs, javascript-scripting, web-server, devops, linux, macos, docker

## Member repositories
- nginx/nginx (main) score 99
- nginx/njs (plugin) score 91

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:56.957476+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T16:52:16.209348+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/nginx/nginx (fetched 2026-08-28T04:11:56.957476+00:00, sha 82dde2e11199)
  - homepage: https://nginx.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.862047+00:00, sha 45ab104a8d63)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.873568+00:00, sha a4be984384df)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/faq.html (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.875587+00:00, sha 586ae45d947a)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/njs (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.888006+00:00, sha fa89713aa955)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.893785+00:00, sha 778ed29d4cca)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/install.html (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.895687+00:00, sha fe4df2805f38)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/beginners_guide.html (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.897270+00:00, sha 1998214b68d2)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en/docs/njs/index.html (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.899135+00:00, sha 4c23f08722b6)
  - site_page: https://nginx.org/en (fetched 2026-08-29T07:49:21.871408+00:00, sha 12172bdabcd9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.