Kestrel web server
Ranked 8 of 8 web servers by recommenders
A 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.
A 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.
9 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 1
- approval share
- 89%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Very fast in benchmarks
“their pursuit for performance is relentless (e.g. see Kestrel and Entity Framework evolution)”
Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “Reinventing how .NET builds and ships (again)” “Kestrel is one of the fastest servers there is, and it beats every Java server out there.”
Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10” “their Kestrel stack was top 10/20 on techempower benchmarks for a while”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “Axios Compromised on NPM – Malicious Versions Drop Remote Access Trojan” - Comment from 12 Nov 2025 in “.NET 10”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weaker container support on Linux
“Kestrel is more performant under Windows than Linux, but the container support isn't there”
Comment from 26 Aug 2026 in “Show HN: I built self-hosted deployment automation tool for Windows and IIS”
Other web servers people recommend
The four most recommended other web servers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| nginx | 130 | 44 | 75% | 12 | 15 yrs5 owners | Approved |
| Caddy | 114 | 10 | 92% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Apache HTTP Server | 52 | 32 | 62% | 12 | 10 yrs5 owners | — |
| Zeroserve | 17 | 8 | 68% | 1 | — | — |
| Kestrel web serverThis page | 8 | 1 | 89% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“where things start to get really spicy in my experience”
“Kestrel is more performant under Windows than Linux, but the container support isn't there”
“Microsoft STRONGLY recommends that if you are running .Net (Core), you run under Kestrel on Linux in a container.”
“their Kestrel stack was top 10/20 on techempower benchmarks for a while”
“it's so deeply baked into ASP.NET Core that you can't use it without pulling in the whole Web SDK”
“deploy web apps to Linux running their own tight little web server (Kestrel) is fantastic”
“their pursuit for performance is relentless (e.g. see Kestrel and Entity Framework evolution)”
“The built in Kestrel server is full featured including HTTP/3 and TLS 1.3!”
“Kestrel alone provider at least an order of magnitude of improvement.”
“Kestrel is one of the fastest servers there is, and it beats every Java server out there.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.