Best self-hosted Web Servers apps

Web Servers and Reverse Proxies. A web server is a piece of software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A Reverse Proxy is a proxy server that appears to any client to be an ordinary web server, but in reality merely acts as an intermediary that forwards requests to one or more ordinary web servers.

20 open source Web Servers tools you host on your own server — with full control of your data and no per-user cost.

Caddy

★ 73,483

Caddy is a web server and reverse proxy that configures HTTPS automatically, with Let's Encrypt certificates renewed on their own. It's the simplest way to publish your self-hosted apps securely, with a minimal config file.

Web Servers Apache-2.0

Traefik

★ 63,702

Traefik is a modern reverse proxy that discovers your services automatically (especially in Docker) and handles HTTPS for you. It's the piece that puts dozens of self-hosted apps online behind a single entry point.

Web Servers MIT

Nginx Proxy Manager

★ 33,357

Nginx Proxy Manager handles reverse proxies and SSL certificates through a simple graphical interface. It's the easiest way to publish your self-hosted apps over HTTPS, without editing configs by hand.

Web Servers MIT

NGINX

★ 30,981

HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server.

Web Servers BSD-2-Clause

SafeLine

★ 21,549

Web application firewall / reverse proxy to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits.

Web Servers GPL-3.0

Pangolin

★ 21,360

Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with dashboard UI, access control, and WireGuard-based tunnels (alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale).

Web ServersRemote Access AGPL-3.0

BunkerWeb

★ 10,643

Next-gen Web Application Firewall (WAF) that will protect your web services.

Web Servers AGPL-3.0

Zoraxy

★ 5,268

General purpose HTTP reverse proxy and forwarding tool.

Web Servers AGPL-3.0

Pomerium

★ 4,860

Identity-aware reverse proxy, successor to now obsolete oauth_proxy. It inserts an OAuth step before proxying your request to the backend, so that you can safely expose your self-hosted websites to public Internet.

Web Servers Apache-2.0

SWAG (Secure Web Application Gateway)

★ 3,680

Nginx webserver and reverse proxy with PHP support, built-in Certbot (Let's Encrypt) client and fail2ban integration.

Web Servers GPL-3.0

go-doxy

★ 3,359

Lightweight, simple, and performant reverse proxy with WebUI, Docker integration, automatic shutdown/startup for container based on traffic.

Web Servers MIT

Algernon

★ 3,017

Small self-contained pure-Go web server with Lua, Markdown, HTTP/2, QUIC, Redis and PostgreSQL support.

Web Servers BSD-3-Clause

Static Web Server

★ 2,275

Cross-platform, high-performance, and asynchronous web server for static file serving.

Web Servers Apache-2.0

Ferron

★ 2,055

Fast, memory-safe web server written in Rust.

Web Servers MIT

UUSEC WAF

★ 1,669

Industry-leading high-performance, AI and semantic technology web application firewall and API security gateway (fork of nginx).

Web Servers GPL-3.0

Apache HTTP Server

Secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.

Web Servers Apache-2.0

godoxy

High-performance reverse proxy and container orchestrator for self-hosters.

Web Servers MIT

HAProxy

Very fast and reliable reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

Web Servers GPL-2.0

Lighttpd

Secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments.

Web Servers BSD-3-Clause

Vinyl Cache

Web application accelerator/caching HTTP reverse proxy (formerly Varnish).

Web Servers BSD-2-Clause

Frequently asked questions

What are the best self-hosted Web Servers tools?

Among the 20 options, the most popular include Caddy, Traefik, Nginx Proxy Manager. Compare license, platform and popularity in the list below.

Is there a free open source alternative for Web Servers?

Yes — all 20 tools on this page are open source and you run them on your own server, with no monthly fee.

Where can I host a Web Servers app?

On a home server (homelab) or a cheap VPS from ~€4/mo. See the suggestions on this page.