Caddy vs NGINX

Caddy is an extensible server platform used as a web server or proxy, and it is self-hosted. By default, it obtains and renews TLS certificates for sites and redirects HTTP to HTTPS. Its reverse proxy supports HTTP, HTTPS, WebSockets, gRPC, and FastCGI, along with load balancing and health checks. Configuration options include JSON through a RESTful API, the Caddyfile, and other adapters. Compile-time plugins extend its static binary. DNS challenge integrations include Cloudflare, DigitalOcean, Route 53, and other providers through libdns. Caddy can run as a command-line process, system service, container, Kubernetes workload, or embedded component. The software is free, with no paywalled features; sponsorship plans add services and support while leaving the license unchanged. Free community help is available through a forum. Caddy says its TLS defaults meet PCI DSS, NIST, and HIPAA compliance requirements, and that dependencies are verified with Go modules and release artifacts are cryptographically signed.

NGINX is a free, self-hosted HTTP web server and traffic proxy. It can serve web content, cache responses, balance loads, proxy TCP and UDP traffic, and handle mail proxying. Reverse proxying supports caching, load balancing, and fault tolerance, with integrations for FastCGI, uwsgi, SCGI, and memcached servers. Listed HTTP capabilities include SSL/TLS SNI, HTTP/2, and HTTP/3; WebSockets, rate limiting, and TLS termination are also specified. Configuration uses files, and response caching is supported, but no web application firewall is listed. NGINX uses one master process and several worker processes running under an unprivileged user. It runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows, or as a self-hosted deployment. Downloads include mainline, stable, and legacy versions, source code, Windows builds, and Linux packages. The software is distributed under the 2-clause BSD License and maintained by F5.