Compare Models

Wondering about the value you gain from upgrading from NGINX Open Source to NGINX Plus?

Check out this side-by-side comparison of popular features and use cases.

Features	NGINX Open Source	NGINX Plus	NGINXaaS for Azure
Load balancer
HTTP and TCP/UDP support
Layer 7 request routing
Session persistence			Sticky Cookie and Sticky Route Only
Active health checks
DNS service‑discovery integration
Content cache
Static and dynamic content caching
Cache‑purging API
MQTT protocol support for IOT devices
Web server and reverse proxy
Origin server for static content
Reverse proxy: HTTP, FastCGI, memcached, SCGI, uwsgi
HTTP/2 gateway
gRPC proxy
HTTP/2 server push
HTTP/3 over QUIC
Security controls
HTTP Basic Authentication
HTTP authentication subrequests
IP address‑based access control lists
Rate limiting
Dual‑stack RSA/ECC SSL/TLS offload
TLS 1.3 support
JWT authentication
OpenID Connect single sign‑on (SSO)
Internal redirect
NGINX as a SAML Service Provider
NGINX App Protect (additional cost)
Monitoring
Export to external monitoring tools			Export Metrics to Azure Monitor
Built-in dashboard			Azure Monitor and Azure Portal
Extended status with 100+ additional metrics
Native Open Telemetry Tracing
High availability (HA)
Active‑active
Active‑passive			N/A
Configuration synchronization across cluster
State sharing: sticky‑learn session persistence, rate limiting, key‑value stores
Programmability
NGINX JavaScript module
NGINX Plus API for dynamic reconfiguration
Key‑value store
Dynamic reconfiguration without process reloads
Streaming media
Live streaming: RTMP, HLS, DASH
VOD: Flash (FLV), MP4
Adaptive bitrate VOD: HLS, HDS
MP4 bandwidth controls
Third-party ecosystem
Ingress controller
OpenShift Router
Dynamic modules repository			Image-Filter, njs, OpenTelemetry, XSLT
Deployable as a service			Microsoft Azure
Commercial support