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Nginx reaches 33.3% web server market share while Apache falls below 50%
- oblio 9y agoIIS will probably continue its nose dive as Microsoft pushes forward with .NET Core. I'm guessing people using .NET Core are more likely to use Kestrel + Nginx as a proxy.
- insulanian 9y agoYes
- patrickmn 9y agoNginx is the web server equivalent of programming languages with fibers (in a good way.) Is there anything that competes/a "next Nginx"?
- gmazza 9y agohttps://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/ Caddy is written in Go, and make use of native fibers/green threads/goroutines.
- problems 9y agoAlso has builtin letsencrypt automation and generally easier configuration, so for small sites it might be a better option than nginx.
- reitanqild 9y agoI think their docs says that unless you expect to scale to multiple x 10 000 requests / second then it caddy might be worth trying. I went with it for the test networks at my job and liked it a lot.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoAnd then when you do, you can use Nginx to reverse proxy N Caddy instances!
- akvadrako 9y agoIt's also slow http://126kr.com/article/8t092z4csxl http://126kr.com/article/8t092z4csxl
- indrekju 9y agoTraefik https://traefik.io/ https://traefik.io/ is pretty cool.
- manojlds 9y agoH2O - https://h2o.examp1e.net https://h2o.examp1e.net
- mholt 9y agoI think it depends on whether you consider nginx primarily a reverse proxy or a web server.
- cookiecaper 9y agoI haven't followed development, but I do remember hearing some rumblings about Cherokee back in the day. [0] [0] http://cherokee-project.com/ http://cherokee-project.com/
- wcummings 9y agoApache.
- jstanley 9y agoNetcraft's web server survey shows nginx at only 20%, and shows Apache dropping below 50% way back in August 2013. That's a big difference compared to w3techs and both sources should be taken with a pinch of salt. It's the 3rd chart on: https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/03/24/march-2017-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/03/24/march-2017-web... Web server market share depends a lot on which sites you're looking at: are you checking the top X million sites or checking every site you can possibly find out about? And also how you're deduplicating them: is every blogspot blog counted separately? Disclaimer: I work at Netcraft (but not on the survey).
- problems 9y agoYeah, if I recall correctly there are a whole bunch of those "parked" domains that get included sometimes - so if you count based on domain and not just on IP you'll get vastly different results.
- jnordwick 9y agoSo, literally, Netcraft confirms Apache is dying.
- smsm42 9y agoFor "dying" being defined as "increases installs but slower than the whole market balloons".
- user5994461 9y ago"while only powering about half the world"
- jnordwick 9y agoYou must be new to the Internet.
- achillean 9y agoIn terms of server usage not based on websites, Shodan sees Apache with significantly more deployments than nginx: - Apache httpd: 11,877,702 - nginx: 4,759,439 - Microsoft IIS httpd: 3,872,974
- Neil44 9y agoI saw a recent version of cPanel that used ngnix as a proxy in front of Apache, with Apache on a high port. That might be responsible for a lot of the new ngnix seen out there.
- koiz 9y agoI've seen a lot of things going this way. There's benefits to having a hybrid configuration.
- ollybee 9y agocPanel has no native support for nginx, if you've seen that it's been using a third party plugin. The second most popluar server controlpanel Plesk supports the configuraion you describes bt it's not enabled by default so I doubt will be affected the statistics.
- keymone 9y agoCalling it. Nginx won because it's configs are not xml. Apache should have learned by now.
- bpicolo 9y agoNginx configs are still terrible because the documentation is not good.
- mrweasel 9y agoXML should NEVER be used for configuration, not even if you're a Java or C# framework/middleware/application server.
- jdubs 9y agoIt's not xml!!!! There's just opening and closing tags for a stanza. Look at a basic virtualhost config.
- EpicEng 9y agoWhy not?
- pyre 9y agoI know that one of the reasons that Apple went with XML for launchd was that you can define an XML schema for the files and validate them against that schema. IIRC, this claim was made in a HN (or Slashdot) discussion maybe 5 or 6 years ago.
- zeveb 9y agoHonestly, I think the statement, 'XML should NEVER be used, period,' is true as well: for any use case I can imagine there are superior alternatives to XML. Even if you have to interface with other services using XML, just use SXML (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SXML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SXML) in your own code and marshal to XML at the very last instant. Ultimately, XML was a colossal mistake carried out to perfection.
- 9y ago
- atemerev 9y agoThis is your periodical friendly reminder that Igor Sysoev, principal author of nginx, is strongly pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine. You might get a taste of his views at his personal website, http://sysoev.ru http://sysoev.ru (in Russian; use Google translate). So, if such things matter to you, you might consider choosing some other web frontend.
- scrollaway 9y agoWhy? Nginx is not a political statement or software nor does it benefit it's author's causes in any way. With that said, use caddy. Not for political reasons, just because it's awesome. https://caddyserver.com/ https://caddyserver.com/
- zzzcpan 9y agoCaddy needs a decent networking library to compete with nginx, it cannot do that with crappy net package.
- atemerev 9y agoIt is not. This is why I ended my comment with "if such things matter to you".
- jacquesm 9y agoWould you expect someone living in Russia and being active in business to come out as anti Putin?
- p49k 9y agoThis is kind of a weird statistic to try to analyze. So many uses of nginx are just the act of putting an Apache/IIS/etc site behind nginx, so technically, both servers still have market share but you only see nginx. It's just that nginx makes it so easy to do certain things, like supporting modern HTTPS, that you might as well add it to your stack rather than replace something.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoPeople do that? And it's widespread? I've never heard of this.
- jamroom 9y agohttps://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/ https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoI know you can reverse proxy, but I haven't heard of anyone reverse proxying to apache.
- nkozyra 9y agoIt's extraordinarily common but largely unnecessary.
- justbaker 9y agoI've done it and yeah don't do it.
- fgonzag 9y agoThat was the original way (at least the most common way) to do CGI. Nginx as a reverse proxy / load balancer / SSL terminator / static file server pointing to a backend running apache for mod_cgi or mod_fastcgi. And a lot of people would have both web servers running on the same server. You already have a web server, why do you need two?! Just pick one!
- jimjag 9y agoHow much of nginx's growth is, do you think, due to it being "better" than Apache httpd (which it isn't, BTW. Apache 2.4 is easily as fast and scalable as nginx), compared to either (1) The aggressive sales and marketing of NGINX the company or (2) nginx fronting Apache httpd and thus "hiding" the growth of Apache httpd usage. But there are lots of Apache httpd haters, for some reason, and so they LOVE promoting the FUD. And yeah, I am an admitted Apache fanboy so feel free to ignore my viewpoint if it shatters your world-view :)
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y agoIt's not all about performance and scalability. Nginx is better, imo, because it has a better design and configuration.
- jimjag 9y agoHow so? I agree that httpd's configuration language is "unique" but it is logical and easy to understand. And httpd's design is modular as the start, supporting dynamic modules LONG before nginx ever did, plus supporting various MPM mode, including prefork, threaded and event-based. So you can pick the right functionality and modules for your environ and use case? Maybe 10 years ago nginx had a "better design" but far, far from the situation today.
- CalRobert 9y agoI started needing to configure web stuff about 6 or 7 years ago. At the time, I could use nginx or Apache. I spent a bit of time (maybe 20 minutes) with Apache since I'd heard of it, thought "Ugh this is a pain and I just want to move on to the fun parts of this project and not banal config details", and then tried nginx. It was much easier, and I've never bothered to learn Apache. To be honest I've kind of assumed it wasn't worth learning since it seems to be in slow, but persistent, decline, and I've never needed to learn it for a particular project. I wonder if anyone else had a similar experience. If the first 20 minutes are nicer with one tool over the other, I suspect most people will stick with that tool until it starts limiting them. I don't think any of the stuff you mention is related to that.
- edpichler 9y agoThis is like (or worst) than comparing orange and apples. Nginx and Apache are completely different.
- jimjag 9y agonginx is creating a name and market for itself as a reverse proxy, even though there are better solutions for reverse-proxies out there, everything from HAProxy to Apache Traffic Server to even Apache httpd. But this is an important market to have. Why? Because it allows for the perception that the "web runs on nginx" simply because all you see are the nginx web proxies and nothing behind that. So what are the servers behind nginx? 9 times out of 10 it is Apache httpd, and numerous instances of it at that. So for each single nginx server "seen" in these surveys, there are unknown multiples of Apache httpd behind the scenes doing the real work. But all that messes up the popular, if incorrect, narrative that Apache httpd is dying and nginx is gobbling up instances. It's all about marketing baby, for a product that really isn't truly "open source" but more so open core. And people buy it hook, line, and sinker.
- vfaronov 9y ago> So what are the servers behind nginx? 9 times out of 10 it is Apache httpd, and numerous instances of it at that. Can you cite a source for this? In my practice, the servers behind nginx are usually platform-specific application servers, such as Gunicorn or uWSGI for Python.
- iamacynic 9y agoyeah, or just ... more nginx.
- snowwrestler 9y agoI think the idea is that if you count every single website on the web, a huge number of them are crappy little sites on shared hosting. Shared hosting usually relies on .htaccess rules, which are only valid under Apache. Popular PHP CMS software also relies on .htaccess. Wordpress for example allegedly powers about a quarter of all websites, and auto-creates an .htaccess file when you enable pretty links, which basically everyone does. Drupal ships with multiple .htaccess files. Sure it's possible to adapt this code into Nginx configuration, but there is really no reason to do that. It's far easier to set up Nginx in front of Apache and get most of the Nginx benefits that way.
- 9y ago
- shanemhansen 9y agoApache has historically been a giant swiss army knife that will do just about everything you could want, from redirect databases to cgi to php interpreters to crazy auth setups. It did all that while still being a reasonably good workhorse for static file serving (when properly turned and using the right worker model, event rather than threaded or process). Nginx seems to have a different model. It does support a number of features but from what I can see it focuses on composing functionality with HTTP rather than adding more plugins. Nginx seems to do a great job at being a load balancer and cdn-lite, and it seems like that's what the market wants out of a web server.
- SmellTheGlove 9y agoI think you're correct, and Nginx does a nice job within that scope. I decided I wanted to learn it a bit, so I picked it for a project. I hadn't even stopped to think that I was reliant on WebDAV for editing that static content! Long story short, I decided not to use any of the partial WebDAV implementations for Nginx and just use sshfs instead. It's so true that Apache is a swiss army knife, though.
- rgacote 9y agonginx is turning into much more than just a load balancer. Projects such as OpenResty (a full CMS built into nginx) and Kong (an API management service), are built right into nginx using Lua. We've done some minor nginx Lua extensions and are looking to offload activities such as JSON validation into the front-end nginx. http://openresty.org/ http://openresty.org/ https://getkong.org https://getkong.org
- awinder 9y agoUnless I've missed something for a while, openresty is more a distribution for building apps / apis or complex middleware on top of nginx, not a full-blown CMS. It's a pre-built collection of useful extensions & lua modules, more of an "app platform"
- hdhzy 9y agoBy JSON validation do you mean just checking if it's well formed or rather something like JSON Schema validation? The latter seems tricky. It's validation inside the application a bottleneck?
- jwildeboer 9y agoOr: 83.3% of web servers are Open Source. How does that sound? :-)
- Nux 9y agoA lot of Apache work load is now behind Nginx or Haproxy, I wouldn't say those numbers are entirely truthful. Consider how Plesk panels nowadays go with Nginx proxy by default, but Apache in the backend; CPanel will probably follow soon and people have already been doing this manually for a while too. Apache is still there, just not in as much plain sight as it used to.
- mrweasel 9y agoThat's certainly true for us, everything is just put behind a pair of Brocade Traffic Managers. I really do like, and to some extend prefer Nginx, but we're perhaps 20 different people servicing different customers so we standardised on Apache, because it support everything, and the traffic managers deal with performance. People like to think they are special, and that they've need more speed, so they turn to Nginx, but most of us can easily be served by Apache.
- petters 9y agoAnother measurement put Google at 13% in 2010. https://m.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/google_web_server/ https://m.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/29/google_web_server/ Also, by amount of traffic it's another story (YouTube).
- njharman 9y agoHuh, I'm surprised Apache is still so high? Are there huge hosting sites that use it or something? Wordpress? I (and I know no one) who has reached for Apache over NGINX in a decade.
- analogmemory 9y agoMost of the cheap shared hosts: GoDaddy, 1&1, HostGator seem to be still using Apache. At least from what i've noticed with my clients
- cookiecaper 9y agoApache has served my purposes fine. I've used nginx in some cases, mostly when it was already configured, but I personally have not yet found a strong reason to prefer one over the other (and I would suggest that this is probably another case of overblown hype, and that Apache probably continues to work perfectly fine for most use cases). I mostly continue to use Apache because I'm more familiar with its syntax, but it sounds like nginx is popular for use cases that we've just used purpose-fit applications like haproxy to fill.
- jayflux 9y agoOf course. I don't know how you would even do shared hosting with nginx, as I don't think it has a .htaccess equivalent, and restarting the server for everyone else wouldn't be acceptable
- agentPrefect 9y agoSo I reckon Docker & PHP7/HHVM have contributed for sure. So much easier deploying Nginx - not to mention just plain nicer.
- jimjag 9y agoShame that Apache httpd 2.4 w/ HHVM is actually fastest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNbKJ22DS10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNbKJ22DS10
- boznz 9y agoCan also be re-written as "Apache Still the dominant web platform for the internet despite the upstarts.." I Don't consciously know either server, I just like the way sites can spin facts differently.
- pthreads 9y ago>Can also be re-written as "Apache Still the dominant web platform for the internet despite the upstarts.." No, it can't. That just misses the entire point of the article. The key take away from it is how much Nginx has grown in the last few years by taking share away from Apache especially those deployments that needed support of modern protocols (from the article: 76.8% of all sites supporting HTTP/2 use Nginx, while only 2.3% of those sites rely on Apache). All the others have barely made a dent. Also read the distribution of how Nginx fares vs. Apache among the top websites. It gives a much better picture of what is happening. >I Don't consciously know either server, I just like the way sites can spin facts differently. Well then you really can't make the statement that it is a spin, can you?
- cdubzzz 9y agoI assume boznz meant an entire (different) article could be written with that headline. One can certainly call this or the theoretical opposite article spin.
- Dylan16807 9y agoYou could maybe write three sentences on "still a lot of Apache". It's the changes that you need to learn about.
- cdubzzz 9y agoI could certainly write a lot more than that on the topic, as could any decent writer. What one needs to learn about and one writes about is not necessarily the same thing. Again, I think the original comment here was more of a general statement about the manipulability of statistical analysis "articles".
- astrostl 9y agoCome for the performance promises, stay for the configuration.
- nirav72 9y agoLooks like Nginx has the highest usage in Russia. Why is that?
- tyingq 9y agoCreator of nginx is Russian. Which probably means good word of mouth marketing, good docs in their language, etc.
- emanreus 9y agoIf I'm not mistaken he created it while working at/for rambler.ru which is one of the biggest Russian websites (it was serving 500 million requests per day at that time).
- wyqydsyq 9y ago"Just to put that growth rate in perspective: this is 70 times the number of sites that switch to Node.js, another fast-growing web server." I find it hard to believe this could be accurate considering the vast majority of Node.js deployments are also utilizing Nginx as a reverse-proxy in front of it. I think a large portion of nginx's uptake is actually due to Node.js' popularity.
- edoceo 9y agoI put go & node behind nginx, so how does that count similar?
- CalRobert 9y agoYeah - I think "put this behind nginx" is pretty standard practice for nodejs projects. I mean, even for relative beginners, advice like this is common (and sound) https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-host-ghost-with-nginx-on-digitalocean https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-host...
- tigershark 9y agoI am really surprised no one brought on the performance topic. Now I have been out of web programming for half a decade or more, but if my memory is not completely gone I remember that nginx was about an order of magnitude faster than apache under heavy load. Is it still the same nowadays?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ramijames 9y agoI run apache locally for development and nginx on my servers. I much prefer setting up nginx.