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
★ 73,483Caddy 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.
Traefik
★ 63,702Traefik 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.
Nginx Proxy Manager
★ 33,357Nginx 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.
NGINX
★ 30,981HTTP and reverse proxy server, mail proxy server, and generic TCP/UDP proxy server.
SafeLine
★ 21,549Web application firewall / reverse proxy to protect your web apps from attacks and exploits.
Pangolin
★ 21,360Identity-aware tunneled reverse proxy with dashboard UI, access control, and WireGuard-based tunnels (alternative to Cloudflare Tunnel, Tailscale).
BunkerWeb
★ 10,643Next-gen Web Application Firewall (WAF) that will protect your web services.
Zoraxy
★ 5,268General purpose HTTP reverse proxy and forwarding tool.
Pomerium
★ 4,860Identity-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.
SWAG (Secure Web Application Gateway)
★ 3,680Nginx webserver and reverse proxy with PHP support, built-in Certbot (Let's Encrypt) client and fail2ban integration.
go-doxy
★ 3,359Lightweight, simple, and performant reverse proxy with WebUI, Docker integration, automatic shutdown/startup for container based on traffic.
Algernon
★ 3,017Small self-contained pure-Go web server with Lua, Markdown, HTTP/2, QUIC, Redis and PostgreSQL support.
Static Web Server
★ 2,275Cross-platform, high-performance, and asynchronous web server for static file serving.
Ferron
★ 2,055Fast, memory-safe web server written in Rust.
UUSEC WAF
★ 1,669Industry-leading high-performance, AI and semantic technology web application firewall and API security gateway (fork of nginx).
Apache HTTP Server
Secure, efficient and extensible server that provides HTTP services in sync with the current HTTP standards.
godoxy
High-performance reverse proxy and container orchestrator for self-hosters.
HAProxy
Very fast and reliable reverse-proxy offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications.
Lighttpd
Secure, fast, compliant, and very flexible web server that has been optimized for high-performance environments.
Vinyl Cache
Web application accelerator/caching HTTP reverse proxy (formerly Varnish).
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.