Best self-hosted Web Servers software in 2026

Web Servers and Reverse Proxies. A web server is a piece of software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A Reverse Proxy is a proxy server that appears to any client to be an ordinary web server, but in reality merely acts as an intermediary that forwards requests to one or more ordinary web servers.

We track 19 open-source, self-hosted Web Servers apps. 16 of them had commits in the last 90 days, 19 can run with Docker, and the most common licenses are MIT (5), Apache-2.0 (4), AGPL-3.0 (3). The most-used languages are Go, C, Rust. Below are the top picks by GitHub stars, followed by every app ranked by stars weighted by maintenance health.

Alternatives to cPanel

Top 5 by GitHub stars

#	App	Stars	Health	Last activity	License	Language	Docker
1	Caddy	79k	Active	2026-11-09	Apache-2.0	Go, deb	✓
2	Traefik	65.5k	Active	2026-11-09	MIT	Go, Docker	✓
3	Nginx Proxy Manager	34.7k	Active	2026-11-09	MIT	Docker	✓
4	NGINX	32.1k	Active	2026-11-09	BSD-2-Clause	C, deb	✓
5	Pangolin	23.5k	Active	2026-11-09	AGPL-3.0	Docker	✓

Caddy — Powerful, enterprise-ready web server with automatic HTTPS.
Traefik — HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy.
Nginx Proxy Manager — Docker container for managing Nginx proxy hosts with a simple, powerful interface.
NGINX — HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server.
Pangolin — Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with dashboard UI, access control, and WireGuard-based tunnels (alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale).

Head-to-head comparisons

Caddy vs Traefik Caddy vs Nginx Proxy Manager Caddy vs NGINX Nginx Proxy Manager vs Traefik NGINX vs Traefik NGINX vs Nginx Proxy Manager

All 19 self-hosted Web Servers apps

Ranked by GitHub stars weighted by maintenance health.

Caddy

Powerful, enterprise-ready web server with automatic HTTPS.

Active ★ 79k Apache-2.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Traefik

HTTP reverse proxy and load balancer that makes deploying microservices easy.

Active ★ 65.5k MIT 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Nginx Proxy Manager

Docker container for managing Nginx proxy hosts with a simple, powerful interface.

Active ★ 34.7k MIT 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

NGINX

HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server.

Active ★ 32.1k BSD-2-Clause 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Pangolin

Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with dashboard UI, access control, and WireGuard-based tunnels (alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale).

Active ★ 23.5k AGPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

SafeLine

Web application firewall / reverse proxy to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits.

Active ★ 23.2k GPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

BunkerWeb

Next-gen Web Application Firewall (WAF) that will protect your web services.

Active ★ 11.2k AGPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

Zoraxy

General purpose HTTP reverse proxy and forwarding tool.

Active ★ 5.6k AGPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Pomerium

Identity-aware reverse proxy, successor to now obsolete oauth_proxy. It inserts an OAuth step before proxying your request to the backend, so that you can safely expose your own websites to public Internet.

Active ★ 5.1k Apache-2.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

go-doxy

Lightweight, simple, and performant reverse proxy with WebUI, Docker integration, automatic shutdown/startup for container based on traffic.

Active ★ 4.2k MIT 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

SWAG (Secure Web Application Gateway)

Nginx webserver and reverse proxy with PHP support, built-in Certbot (Let's Encrypt) client and fail2ban integration.

Active ★ 3.8k GPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

Algernon

Small self-contained pure-Go web server with Lua, Markdown, HTTP/2, QUIC, Redis and PostgreSQL support.

Active ★ 3k BSD-3-Clause 🐳 Docker~$5/mo

Static Web Server

Cross-platform, high-performance, and asynchronous web server for static file serving.

Active ★ 2.4k Apache-2.0, MIT 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Ferron

Fast, memory-safe web server written in Rust.

Active ★ 2.2k MIT 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

UUSEC WAF

Industry-leading high-performance, AI and semantic technology web application firewall and API security gateway (fork of nginx).

Active ★ 1.7k GPL-3.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Vinyl Cache

Web application accelerator/caching HTTP reverse proxy (formerly Varnish).

Active ★ 13 BSD-2-Clause 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Apache HTTP Server

Secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.

Unknown Apache-2.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

HAProxy

Very fast and reliable reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

Unknown GPL-2.0 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Lighttpd

Secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments.

Unknown BSD-3-Clause 🐳 Docker~$3.5/mo

Frequently asked questions

What is the best self-hosted Web Servers software in 2026?

By GitHub stars, the most popular self-hosted Web Servers apps are Caddy (79,028 stars), Traefik (65,539 stars), Nginx Proxy Manager (34,717 stars). Popularity is only one signal: also check maintenance health, license and whether it fits your setup.

How many self-hosted Web Servers apps are actively maintained?

16 of the 19 apps listed had commits in the last 90 days; for 3 we have no repository activity data.

Which self-hosted Web Servers apps can I run with Docker?

19 of the 19 apps can run with Docker; 2 publish an image on Docker Hub, including Caddy and BunkerWeb.

Which licenses do self-hosted Web Servers apps use?

The most common licenses in this category are MIT (5 apps), Apache-2.0 (4 apps), AGPL-3.0 (3 apps).

How much does it cost to self-host Web Servers software?

The software itself is free to download. Based on our rough hardware estimates, the cheapest suitable VPS plan starts at about $3.5/month (median $3.5/month across apps in this category). Several light apps can share one server.

Related categories

Proxy

Figures from GitHub and Docker Hub as of 2026-11-15; hosting costs are rough estimates.