These approaches have certain tradeoffs. When it comes to websites with high traffic, the following graph is interesting. (Pros and Cons), Nginx vs Node.js - What's the Difference ? On the other hand, Apache can be memory intensive, especially when running multiple server blocks. acknowledge that you have read and understood our, Data Structure & Algorithm Classes (Live), Full Stack Development with React & Node JS (Live), Full Stack Development with React & Node JS(Live), GATE CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Original Papers and Official Keys, ISRO CS Syllabus for Scientist/Engineer Exam, Network Devices (Hub, Repeater, Bridge, Switch, Router, Gateways and Brouter), Types of area networks - LAN, MAN and WAN, Transmission Modes in Computer Networks (Simplex, Half-Duplex and Full-Duplex), Implementation of Diffie-Hellman Algorithm. The flexibility advantages with Apache makes it more competitive when flexibility is concerned. Within the hardware limitations, Nginx can scale up easily to accommodate increasing traffic, which Apache can't do. NGINX is about 2.5 times faster than Apache based on the results of a benchmark test running up to 1,000 concurrent connections. Why is NGINX So Popular? Nginx : Nginx is a web server that was developed by Nginx.inc and initially released on 4 October 2004. (Pros and Cons), Tomcat vs Nginx - What's the Difference ? Anthony Heddings is the resident cloud engineer for LifeSavvy Media, a technical writer, programmer, and an expert at Amazon's AWS platform. NGINX performs 2.5 times faster than Apache and consumes less memory as well. nginx reverse proxy to . But with dynamic content, they take a significantly different approach. When you start serving dynamic content, the bottleneck lies elsewhere, such as in your PHP engine, your web app, or your database. TL; DR: We assess two of the most popular web servers: NGINX and Apache, on six key points of comparison (performance for static vs. dynamic content, OS support, security, flexibility, documentation, and support). Nginx vs. Litespeed vs. Apache If you haven't heard of Litespeed, it is a web server application created by a company called Litespeed Technologies in 2006. NGINX vs Apache - which server is superior? This is a limitation for users as far as flexibility is concerned but on the positive note, it means better security since dynamic modules can pose security concerns. Control All Your Smart Home Devices in One App. Apache vs Nginx: Connectivity In Apache, the client requests are processed by multiple threads. Though as mentioned, node.js is an interesting project platform. Is able to handle more traffic than other web servers like Apache. When combined with modern deployment and management tools, both Apache and NGINX are extremely flexible to use. Due to the event-driven architecture of NGINX, it is capable of handling heavy web traffic and processing static files efficiently. Note: In default installation on Linux, you will have this file under /etc/nginx/conf.d. By default, Apache is configured to handle 150 concurrent connections to the server. One difference between Apache and Nginx is the specific way that they handle connections and network traffic. Apache also has much better plugin support, in the form of modules that can be dynamically loaded without restarting the server. Nginx works differently, and can process multiple connections within a single process thread. Nginx is lightweight and has fewer resource requirements than Apache. But, the configuration process of setting up NGINX is tougher than Apache. However, this speed only really matters when serving static content to a lot of users at once. generate link and share the link here. cache commonly requested content, and to act as an additional layer of security. A useful example is server-side rendering Node applications, where HTTP requests to dynamic pages need to be forwarded to a server running Express, but static resources (images, stylesheets, etc.) So serving the static content 2.5 times faster than Apache and consumes less memory. Advantages of Nginx Uses Non-blocking, Event-driven architecture that requires less CPU and memory. So, if you want to work with Windows, then Apache is an option you should consider adopting. Nginx was basically developed by a Russian developer in 2004. When static content is concerned, both Apache and NGINX take the same route to display content on the webpage: They deliver the static file asked by the website visitor. . Nginx comes in a close second at 41.8%. View all posts by the Author. The change to NGINX will require switching from PHP to PHP-FPM resulting in a distributed architecture with a higher complexity configuration, but this is outweighed by PHP-FPM being faster than PHP for processing requests. View offers. You can check also free scripts like SlickStack for Nginx/WordPress servers that will automatically configure rate-limiting (anti-brute-force) and anti-DDOS (blocks xmlrpc.php) and some other features like security headers. Apache natively runs PHP natively in the same process, communicating directly with the PHP engine. Whereas Nginx uses a dedicated thread management system for approaching the client's request. Nginx is a simple, lightweight and fast web server. Because Apache is in such wide use, it receives security and feature updates frequently and there is a large base for support out there. Therefore, a full overview of how strong Apache and NGINX are in handling these security issues is beyond the scope of this article. (Speed Comparison), HAProxy vs Nginx - What's the Difference? How to Show Changes in Microsoft Excel on Desktop, Microsoft Create Is Here to Revamp Office Templates, YouTube Shorts Are Now Slightly Better on Your TV, Grab a Roku Streaming Stick 4K for $25, the Lowest Price Yet, 2022 LifeSavvy Media. This dropin solution acts as a network offload device in front of Apache servers, translating slow Internetside connections into fast and reliable serverside connections, and completely offloading keepalive connections from Apache servers. Are Apache and NGINX the Same? No, Apache and NGINX are not the same. NGINX module developers need to create efficient and accurate code, without any failures, that interacts appropriately with the complex event-driven kernel to avoid blocking operations. How-To Geek is where you turn when you want experts to explain technology. This is the primary reason why NGNX is considered one great option for those looking out for affordable hosting solutions. Find out if Apache or Nginx is a better for your website. I think the answer would be more driven by the ecosystem you are in. We and our partners use data for Personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. NGINX does not have any ability to process dynamic content natively. Nginx can also be used as a reverse proxy server which revises the request from the client and sends the request to the proxy server. Top 10 Best Open Source Web Servers for Linux / Windows. That's what we look into here. Share A useful feature of Nginx is the ability to configure the server to display cached website content when the server is down or busy. For a long time, it was used to manage the heavy loaded Russian sites and served dynamic HTTP content on the network. So, you are not restricted to choose your OS if you go with Apache. Though there was a weak start for support and documentation for NGINX, it has grown rapidly since. Apache has been the webserver ecosystem leader for over 20 years. Nginx Architecture: Nginx is an event-based web server. Content can be static or dynamic. It is actually not free, since it comes as a part of the Windows operating system. Adding a layer of Apache or Nginx in front of your node.js app means you have a battle-tested, security-hardened piece of software on the live internet as an interface to your app. For displaying dynamic content, Speedemys benchmark test results revealed that the Nginx vs Apache performance for both were exactly the same. Restart both servers to work. On the contrary, NGINX relies on different programs like FastCGI and Websphere to deliver dynamic content to visitors. Clearly, NGINX serves static content much faster than Apache. For example, in apache every request spawns a entirely new process, while in nginx it just creates a new thread. If you do not have a big load then 128 MB will be sufficient. NGINX, on the other hand, has a sophisticated architecture making module development more challenging. However, this method has some advantages as well. Edit the file and add the following, which will enable Nginx to listen on 443 port The Apache Security Team exists to provide help and advice to Apache projects on security issues and to coordinate the handling of security vulnerabilities. The reason behind the difficult functionality of the NGINX platform is the fewer number of modules present in NGINX as compared to Apache. Just like Apache, NGINX is an open-source platform too and enables users to get started for free. It is worth noting that static modules are not very hard to work in NGINX. Another benchmark running with 512 concurrent connections, showed that NGINX is about two times faster and consumed a bit less memory (4%). It also acts as reverse caching and works efficiently with static files like JS files, CSS files etc. A corresponding interface can be loaded with the module mod_proxy_fcgi. The consent submitted will only be used for data processing originating from this website. He is also an expert on blockchain technology and its development, having worked in the industry for several years. Apache HTTP Server - The most popular web server on the Internet since April 1996. lighttpd - A secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web-server that has been optimized for high-performance environments. The major difference between the two is how they handle the client request. This makes running multiple sites on the same server very easy. NGINX does not allow directory listings by default while Apache does in most cases. IIS vs Apache vs NGINX: IIS web server. Due to the explosive growth in data traffic volumes and the number of users of the world-wide-web, NGINX was introduced to overcome the performance limitations of Apache web servers. If we run 10k connections it may overload the server and the request will be run too slow and increase the traffic for other requests. When it comes to Apache vs Nginx, the fundamental difference lies in their design architecture. Is Nginx really better, and are there any benefits to using Apache? Theyre both free and open source, though Nginx does have a paid version called Nginx Plusthat adds a software load balancer on top of open-source Nginx. The architecture of NGINX makes it more capable at handling heavy static content. This article is about Apache vs Nginx comparison. So, overall OS support rating for Apache vs NGINX: Apache is leading in OS compatibility. If you want to cache some extra data for quick access you may need extra disc space. (Pros and Cons), How to Setup Docker Swarm Load Balancing using Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04, How to Connect Linux Remote Desktop (RDP) from Windows 10 / 11, Wireless Access Point vs Router Whats the Difference ? To handle PHP and other requests for dynamic content, NGINX must pass to an external processor for execution and wait for the rendered content to be sent back. Apache is fully supported on Windows, and as such is the go-to web server on that platform. Still, Apache wins the game at this point with its simple loading and unloading of modules. Can I Use iCloud Drive for Time Machine Backups? Free and Open source. (Explained). Similar to other web hosting solutions, Apache also hosts HTML pages, PHP files, audio and video. This webserver becomes famous very fast due to its features and faster than Apache. https://github.com/littlebizzy/slickstack nucloud 9 months, 1 week ago The tradeoff of NGINX open source and simple configuration benefits comes as difficult functionality after installation. NGINX handles attacks better - I think by its nature of using less memory, it can take more brute force and DDOS type of attacks but stalling out. As you probably know, both Apache and NGINX are written in the C language, so clearly, we can expect much concerning security. This NGINX vs Apache head-to-head comparison covers everything you need to know about the two. It can be difficult to select between these two servers because they are both excellent. Like many decisions when it comes to development, the choice will come down to what your requirements are. Nginx can be over twice as fast as Apache when serving static content, and much less CPU intensive when doing so, which makes it excellent for running on low powered systems. 3. Summary of Apache vs. Nginx. NGINX performs the HTTP-related heavy lifting serving static files, caching content, and offloading slow HTTP connections so that the Apache server can run the application code in a safe and secure environment. Both servers are secure, have good support communities, and are easy to configure. There is a large library of first and third-party documentation available for the core server and for task-based scenarios involving hooking Apache up with other software. While NGINX is more efficient, it does not have Apaches configuration system, and they both have their advantages and disadvantages. They say Nginx is better with regards to handling static substance. This allows it to execute dynamic content within the web server itself without having to rely on external components. Wow, where to begin on this messy subject? And while it may process 10 threads at a comparable speed to Nginx, when it's scaled up to hundreds of concurrent connections Nginx takes a deciding lead. Comparatively the same level of security. Created in 2002, Nginx is a free and open source software that functions differently than Apache. The NGINX Plus offers additional functionalities for security. Well, Nginx is relatively secure than another web server. However, Apache has more functionality and features. Differences Between Squid Proxy vs Nginx (Pros and Cons). To handle many requests the Apache server has to create different threads of execution for each request made to the server. Apache vs NGINX performance is measured by how the server delivers large volumes of content to the client browser and this is an important factor. It is specially designed for high traffic websites. Disadvantage of NGINX: Has less support from developer community and documentation as compared to Apache. From my point of view, both softwares are doing well in security . Apache also handles attacks such as DDoS with much more professionalism than NGINX. Over 50% of the websites in the world run on these two web servers. Apache, on one hand, interprets dynamic content directly and delivers the content to the website visitor. However, working with NGINX requires more effort than Apaches module system would. As you can see, it is now much more than just a webserver. Ngnixs master process requires around 16MB and each worker requires at least 100-300 MB and later it depends on your project configuration. By using our site, you Developing and innovating applications on Apache is easy. Litespeed is probably not bad, but it's a paid software. This means that while Apache's structure requires it to start a completely new process for each request that it . It has been tested thoroughly by both developers and users with multiple directory index directives. It is mostly used for Unix, Linux and Solaris platforms. The top reviewer of Apache Web Server writes "Easy to use and quick to deploy with good security". Moreover, Apache has full support for Windows. NGINX offers security advisory to mitigate DDoS attacks. The core component provides basic server-like capability, accepting connections and managing concurrency. If you ever forget something, you can always come back and clear your doubts! NGINX has better performance than Apache for serving static content. It improves content and application quality and security. Nginx and Apache both fully support any Unix system, including FreeBSD. In my experience, both work very well in many circumstances. NGINX Plus, a software load balancer, web server, and content cache built on top of open source NGINX, uses a modular architecture too. The performance and scalability of NGINX arise from its event-driven architecture. How to Manage an SSH Config File in Windows and Linux, How to Run GUI Applications in a Docker Container, How to Run Your Own DNS Server on Your Local Network, How to View Kubernetes Pod Logs With Kubectl, How to Check If the Docker Daemon or a Container Is Running, How to Use Cron With Your Docker Containers.