Comparison of lightweight web servers

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Lightweight web servers are web servers which have been designed to run with very small resource overhead because of hardware, environment, or simply for the challenge of it.

Many of these servers have been created as a mental exercise to determine if a modern webserver could be written to run on limited resources such as those provided in a graphing calculator, a Commodore 64, or in 64 kB (64 KiB) total of memory[citation needed]. Others have been written as commercial or open source endeavors to create webservers with low overhead for embedded systems (network router configuration pages) or low memory requirements.

Overview

A list of notable lightweight web servers follows:

Server Creator/Developer Operating Systems Development Language License Last release version Release date
Boa Paul Phillips GNU/Linux, BSD C GPL 0.94.13 2005-02-23
Cherokee Álvaro López Ortega Mac OS X, GNU/Linux, Solaris, BSD C GPL[1] 1.2.103[2] 2013-01-26
Hiawatha Hugo Leisink POSIX, Unix, Linux, BSD, OS X, QNX, Windows, Haiku[3] C GPL 2[4] 8.8.1 2013-03-05[5]
HTTP File Server Massimo Melina (aka rejetto) Windows Delphi GPL 2.2f 2009-02-17
IIS Express Microsoft Windows  ? Closed source 7.5 2011-01-18
lighttpd Jan Kneschke Unix, Linux C BSD[6] 1.4.32[7] 2012-11-21
Mongoose Sergey Lyubka Windows, Unix, Linux C MIT 3.3 2012-09-23[8]
Mongrel2 Zed A. Shaw Unix, Linux C BSD[9] 1.8.0 2012-07-26[10]
Mongrel Zed A. Shaw Unix, Linux Ruby GPL 2 or Ruby License[11] 1.1.5 2008-05-22[12]
NanoHTTPD Jarno Elonen Java enabled, including mobile Java Modified BSD 1.25 2012-02-12
nginx NGINX, Inc. Unix-like, Windows C BSD 1.4.1[13] 2013-05-07
Perlbal Brad Fitzpatrick Any OS with Perl Perl GPL / Artistic 1.73 2009-10-13
Resin Server Scott Ferguson Unix, Windows, Mac OS X Java, C GPL 4.026 2012-02-29
thttpd Acme Labs Unix C BSD 2.25b 2003-12-29
Tntnet Tommi Mäkitalo Unix C++ LGPL 2.1 2012-04-02
Server Creator/Developer Operating Systems Development Language Software license Last release version Release date
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Operating system support

Server Windows Linux Mac OS X BSD Solaris QNX SafeRTOS standalone software
Boa ? Yes ? Yes Yes ? No
Cherokee Yes[14][15][16] Yes Yes Yes[17][18][19] Yes ? ? No
Hiawatha Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes[20][21] Yes ? No
HTTP File Server Yes No No No ? ? ? No
IIS Express Yes No No No No ? ? No
lighttpd Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? No
Mongoose Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes
Mongrel Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? ? No
NanoHTTPD Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? No
nginx Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? No
Perlbal Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? ? No
Resin Server Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? No
thttpd No Yes Yes[22] Yes Yes ? ? No
Tntnet No Yes Yes Yes Yes ? ? Yes
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See also


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References

  1. ^ FAQ of Cherokee web server; license subsection
  2. ^ [1]
  3. ^ Hiawatha on Haiku OS
  4. ^ License of the Hiawatha web server
  5. ^ Changelog of Hiawatha web server
  6. ^ License of Lighttpd server
  7. ^ Announce of version 1.4.32 of lighttpd server at official page
  8. ^ Mongoose releases
  9. ^ License of Mongrel2
  10. ^ List of Mongrel2 releases
  11. ^ License of Mongrel
  12. ^ List of Mongrel releases
  13. ^ Nginx website
  14. ^ Repository of Cherokee's binaries at official page
  15. ^ Note in Cherokee official page which says that Windows binaries are temporarily unavailable
  16. ^ Unofficial windows binaries repository of Cherokee
  17. ^ Cherokee port in FreeBSD.org
  18. ^ Cherokee port in OpenBSD.org
  19. ^ Cherokee package in NetBSD.org
  20. ^ Compiled on Solaris(Hiawatha webserver)
  21. ^ Support
  22. ^ Compiled for target host="next"
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Last modified on 16 May 2013, at 16:14