Apache HTTP Server vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache HTTP Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Apache Web Server (Apache HTTP Server) is an open source HTTP web server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows.N/A
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Considered Both Products
Apache HTTP Server
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Both Nginx and Apache are trying to accomplish the same thing, with the exception that Nginx is a much faster product. It allows for multi-threading which spreads out the traffic around the server. Apache is typically enabled by default and due to the high volume of websites …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Apache is often used in conjunction with Nginx, with Nginx in front of Apache to serve static assets like CSS and JS. Both are easy to configure. IIS is pretty cumbersome and is not as flexible as Apache.
Chose Apache HTTP Server
We chose Apache because it handles dynamic content better than Nginx and it's very well supported. Nginx does handle high traffic sites better, but most of our sites do not get thousands of visitors or more a day as we are a small company serving niche markets. It is notable …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Against Nginx: Mainly- it's been in the field the longest. There's not really a reason to move to Nginx on it's own. Apache has a mountain of documentation and how-tos that extend from the Foundation itself, to Individual Developers, spanning over 20 years, and most of it …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
To be quite honest I often select Apache because it is the world's most commonly used web server and I have been using it for more than 20 years across many organizations. I have never been burned using Apache. Apache rises above IIS in functionality, configurability, and the …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Apache lacks the scalability and feature set of NGINX but our team was not only far more experienced with Apache HTTP Server but was relying on tools and frameworks that required Apache HTTP Server. We've recently considered moving to NGINX but the workload to migrate and train …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Apache is more simple, also it tends to be more stable and it is less complicated to use, comparing with other complex solutions that are difficult to troubleshot.
So wherever possible I select Apache HTTP Server for own/enterprise use also advise consumers to select the Apache …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
The comparison with other products from IBM or Oracle is difficult. These are mostly software that has to be paid for. The only fair comparison at eye level is probably the NGINX web server: It is also free and offers even higher performance. In the meantime, there is also a …
Chose Apache HTTP Server
I have loved Apache and the brief experience I had with IIS wasn't as good. Nginx I have heard good things and though we use it heavily for our servers now without problems, I haven't configured it myself.
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server has more stability and features than the other products. It is also more secure. Apache HTTP Server has a more developer base so it is easier to find resources on it.
Chose Apache HTTP Server
Apache Web Server is the oldest among all of these above-mentioned web server solutions provide a wider range of tools and support available which is of great help when creating a web app because less investment of time and money is what contributes to the success of a project …
NGINX
Chose NGINX
MS IIS and Apache HTTP Server both provide many similar services. However the configuration simplicity, and performance characteristics helped us choose NGINX above the other 2 products.
Chose NGINX
It is like comparing a formula 1 car against a regular street car in terms of performance or installation simplicity
Chose NGINX
Apache is a market leader but NGINX is new and has new features. Lightweight and can handle static requests. We use EC2 and I believe NGINX is more suited when it comes to scalability.
Chose NGINX
NGINX is faster and easier to configure. It has better reverse proxy features which is much easy to configure.
Chose NGINX
Nnginx is more light-weight than many other web servers, has a very expressive configuration language, easier to configure than tools like IIS and Apache, easy to install certificates for SSL, much easier to model complex routing scenarios than IIS, easier to configure than …
Chose NGINX
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] …
Chose NGINX
Nginx is much more lightweight than apache HTTP.
Chose NGINX
NGINX Stacks up at the top for me because it's fast, reliable, and secure and apache is also usable but not so good in comparison to NGINX and since I and my organization have switched to NGINX I also don't want to look back at apache as NGINX works the best for our use case …
Chose NGINX
NGINX's footprint is much smaller than Apache, and it's great for serving up static content. The URL rewriting was not as familiar as Apache, but just as powerful once configured correctly. As a load balancer, it's much more affordable than Citrix ADC. We used the load …
Chose NGINX
Compared to Apache, NGINX is much lighter on resource consumption, and also far faster as a server, serving static content over twice as fast in most benchmark tests. NGINX doesn't offer as much potential configuration and customization as Apache, however, so if these advanced …
Chose NGINX
Nginx's cache mechanism is better than Apache and HAProxy. Also Nginx is very light weight and works for multiple sites with much less work. i.e. As front end proxy server configuration is very easy as compared to other applications. Apache sometimes crashes and is not able to …
Chose NGINX
Nginx is way easier to configure and runs better than Microsoft’s offering, in my opinion, and I’ll take it over Apache for its simplicity.
Chose NGINX
Other Web servers are either not performant enough or locked to a platform. The main competitor in my opinion is the Apache Web Server, that can be extended in functionality through a diverse set of modules to perform almost any task related to a network server. But at scale, I …
Chose NGINX
I selected Nginx because it is easy to learn, use, and maintain. I almost never have to troubleshoot it ever since I deploy it. It just meets my need for a personal learning experience. It works well with PHP and MySQL on Linux. That is why I chose it at first.
Chose NGINX
We were happy to drop Apache to serve our applications.
Chose NGINX
Microsoft IIS server is not open source and it comes with its own overhead in terms of cost which is not the case with Nginx as we do not need to purchase a handful of other products in order to get an HTTP server up and running. If I compare it to Apache Server, it …
Chose NGINX
Nginx works on basic operating system principles and what I like the most about it is that even after being feature-rich and easily customizable it uses minimum resources.
Chose NGINX
Apache has the advantage of being very widely supported and well-known, which makes integration with various tools and software simple, whereas Nginx often requires manual configuration to achieve the same thing. However, the ease of use, configurability, and relatively small …
Chose NGINX
Apache is still widely used by the software community and can accomplish many of the same things Nginx can. Nginx is a better solution when you are serving static content (vs. dynamic content), are on a Unix-system, and have a high-traffic website. In addition, certain things …
Chose NGINX
NetApp, f1, etc., [I've] used them all. I find using commodity hardware across diverse endpoints running software solutions is cheaper while being more available than individual hardware solutions. and I find Nginx to be the best proxy solution that can do everything we need.
Chose NGINX
Configuration options are easier on Nginx. It's better suited for our cases. It's easier to find specialists for Nginx in our area.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
Apache HTTP Server
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.2
21 Ratings
3% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.310 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.018 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.118 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings8.718 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.418 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings8.016 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Small Businesses
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 8.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
Enterprises
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.8 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
8.0
(20 ratings)
8.8
(48 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
9.3
(2 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache HTTP ServerNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
As I mentioned earlier, the Apache HTTP Server has a small disadvantage compared to the competition (NGINX) in terms of performance. If you run websites that really have a lot of visitors, NGINX might be the better alternative.
On the other hand, the Apache HTTP Server is open source and free. Further functionalities can be activated via modules. The documentation is really excellent.
Read full review
F5
[NGINX] is very well suited for high performance. I have seen it used on servers with 1k current connections with no issues. Despite seeing it used in many environments I've never seen software developers use it over apache, express, IIS in local dev environments so it may be more difficult to setup. I've also seen it used to load balance again without issues.
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Pros
Apache
  • Street Cred: Apache Web Server is the Founder for all of Apache Foundation's other projects. Without the Web Server, Apache Foundation would look very different. That being said, they have done a good job of maintaining the code base, and keeping a lot of what makes Apache so special
  • Stability: Apache is rock-solid. While no software is perfect, Apache can parse your web sources quickly and cleanly.
  • Flexibility: Need to startup your own Webpage? Done. Wordpress? Yup. REST Endpoint? Check. Honeypot? Absolutely.
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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
Read full review
Cons
Apache
  • The default configurations which comes with Apache server needs to get optimized for performance and security with every new installation as these defaults are not recommended to push on the production environment directly.
  • Security options and advanced configurations are not easy to set up and require an additional level of expertise.
  • Admin frontend GUI could be improved to a great extent to match with other enterprise tools available to serve similar requirements.
Read full review
F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the product
Read full review
Usability
Apache
No answers on this topic
F5
Front end proxy and reverse proxy of Nginx is always useful. I always prefer to Nginx in overall usability when you have application server and database or multiple application servers and single database i.e. clustered application. Nginx provides really good features and flexibility which helps the system administrator in case of troubleshooting and also from the administration perspective. Also, Nginx doesn't delay any request because of internal performance issues.
Read full review
Support Rating
Apache
I give this rating because there is so much Apache documentation and information on the web that you can literally do anything. This has to do with the fact that there is a huge Open Source community that is beyond mature and perhaps one of the most helpful to be found. The only thing that should hold anyone back from anything is that they can not read. RTFM, my friend. And I must say that the manual is excellent.
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F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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Alternatives Considered
Apache
I has a lot more features, except that IIS is more integrated in a Windows environment. But now with .net core also possible from Apache it would work anywhere really. Only in a full Windows environment where full integration is needed I would chose to go for IIS. Otherwise Apache it is.
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F5
We have used Traffic, Apache, Google Cloud Load Balancing and other managed cloud-based load balancers. When it comes to scale and customization nothing beats Nginx. We selected Nginx over the others because
  • we have a large number of services and we can manage a single Nginx instance for all of them
  • we have high impact services and Nginx never breaks a sweat under load
  • individual services have special considerations and Nginx lets us configure each one uniquely
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apache
  • Works as intended, so it's less to worry about.
  • Works great on elastic environments (like EC2).
  • As an Open Source project, you can get support for almost any problem you can have.
  • Configuration files, while powerful, can be tricky to dominate for some.
Read full review
F5
  • Nginx has decreased the burden of web server administration and maintenance, and we are spending less time on server issues than when we were using Apache.
  • Nginx has allowed more people in our company to get involved with configuring things on the web server, so there's no longer a single point of failure ("the Apache guy").
  • Nginx has given us the ability to handle a larger number of requests without scaling up in hardware quite so quickly.
Read full review
ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration