HACKER Q&A
📣 httbs

Are we upon the convergence of Apache, Nginx and “other”?


Common wisdom suggests that there are two major web servers: Apache (losing popularity) and Nginx (gaining popularity).

However, a look at the latest trends[1] suggests that we are upon the age of a "triple convergence" in popularity between Apache, Nginx, and the mysterious "other" category.

Which leads to the logical questions: What is the "other" category? How did it become so big? And does it threaten the rule of the Spartan Apachinexology?

[1]: https://www.netcraft.com/blog/september-2023-web-server-survey/

  👤 alrs Accepted Answer ✓
I have nothing bad to say about Apache, and it felt kind of weird that people were investing time in replacing it when so many of the scripting languages that sat behind it were hot-garbage, top to bottom.

I assume that "other" is "load balancers."

👤 ggm
Caddy. Broke the ground with QUIC. Amazingly fast.

I jumped from Apache to nginx but the cgi thing continues to confuse me. I hate the inner protocol to pass cgi calls to a preforked engine, fast though it is.

👤 seedless-sensat
Other: Node.js, Golang, CDNs, Cloud-managed services, etc.
👤 ksec
OpenResty / Cloudflare, Caddy, IIS, etc.
👤 aynyc
Cloud services such as API gateway. I don’t think load balancers show up in the survey.
👤 elsadek
Nginx was always the preferred one for reverse proxy, and it has a large existence compared to Apache.