F5 NGINX Plus: Compare NGINX Models

Find Out Which NGINX Model Is Right for You – NGINX Open Source or NGINX Plus

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  

Next Steps