The best web servers, according to hackers
8 web servers recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
All web servers
- nginxA proven, fast web server and reverse proxy with a huge knowledge base, trusted for decades of production traffic; critics cite manual configuration, sparse docs and surprising defaults.130recommend
- CaddyA web server and reverse proxy people pick for fully automatic HTTPS certificates and a very short config file, though some find it slower than Nginx under heavy load.114recommend
- Apache HTTP ServerLong-running, mature web server that people trust for reverse proxies, shared hosting and simple sites; critics find its configuration complex and its default settings risky.52recommend
- ZeroserveFree open-source web server that you can script with eBPF; people like the concept and benchmark results, but it lacks ACME and nginx's module ecosystem.17recommend
- FrankenPHPA fast PHP server that bundles Caddy, needs no separate PHP runtime, and can ship as one executable. Critics warn that worker mode keeps state between requests.15recommend
- lighttpdRecommended as a solid, low-attack-surface C web server that runs with little fuss. One critic found it slower than nginx in a Django stack.10recommend
- RedbeanRecommended as a single-file, portable web server that runs from one executable; critics note outdated TLS.9recommend
- Kestrel web serverA fast web server built into ASP.NET Core that people recommend for running .NET apps, including on Linux. The most common caveat is that it performs better on Windows than in Linux containers.8recommend