Best Web Servers for Windows of 2024

The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort in development and maintenance of an open-source HTTP Server for modern operating systems, including UNIX and Windows. This project aims to provide an efficient, secure, extensible and extensible server that offers HTTP services in accordance with current HTTP standards.

Since 2024 Jaisocx has supported PHP over HTTP/3. It switches between HTTP/1.1, H2 and H3 depending on the negotiation with HTTP client. Charset detection is a unique feature that detects the text content and displays it correctly, such as in German or French alphabets. It has a built-in engine for securing the endpoints using Basic Auth and JSON Web Token. c) Proxy Endpoints. d) The framework-like solution to publish SQL query results in JSON format is also available out of the box and requires minimal configuration. This software is well-documented on the same company website. f) The software is free. g) It has the Docker Hub repository. h) And Github.com repository that contains some basic samples of Laravel, Symfony, and WordPress apps using Docker Compose.

NGINX Open Source: The open source web server that powers more than 400 million websites. NGINX Plus is an open-source software load balancer, webserver, and content cache. It was built on top NGINX. NGINX Plus offers enterprise-grade features that are not available in the open-source offering. These include session persistence, configuration via API and active health checks. NGINX Plus can be used instead of your hardware loadbalancer to allow you to innovate without being restricted by infrastructure. You can save more than 80% over hardware ADCs without sacrificing functionality or performance. You can deploy anywhere: public cloud or private cloud, baremetal, virtual machines, containers, or virtual machines. You can save time with the NGINX Plus API, which automates common tasks. Modern app teams require an API-driven platform that integrates seamlessly into CI/CD workflows. It can be used to automate app deployment, whether you have a hybrid or microservices architecture. It also makes app lifecycle management simpler.

Lighttpd (pronounced "pron") is all about security, speed, compliance and flexibility. Lighty is quickly changing the definition of efficiency in a webserver. It is optimized for high-performance environments and is therefore very efficient. Lighttpd is the ideal solution for any server experiencing load problems. It has a smaller memory footprint than other web-servers and can manage the cpu-load effectively. It's also open-source and licensed under the new BSD license. Lighttpd powers many popular Web 2.0 sites. Its high speed infrastructure allows them to scale many times faster with the same hardware as other web-servers.

Internet Information Services (IIS for Windows®, Server) is a flexible, secure, and manageable Web server that can host any content on the Internet. IIS's open, scalable architecture is capable of handling the most difficult tasks.

Caddy simplifies your infrastructure. It handles TLS certificate renewals, OCP stapling and static file serving. Kubernetes Ingress is also included. Because it is modular, you can do more with one static binary that compiles on any platform. Caddy is great for containers, as it doesn't require dependencies (not even libc). Caddy can be used almost anywhere. Caddy automatically renews TLS certificates on your sites and obtains them. It even staples OCSP replies. Its innovative certificate management features are the best in their class. Caddy is written in go and offers greater memory security than servers written in C. It also has a hardened TLS stack powered with the go standard library that serves a large portion of all Internet traffic. Caddy is both an efficient, flexible static file server and a powerful, scalable, reverse proxy.

Node.js is an asynchronous JavaScript runtime that drives JavaScript calls. It's designed to create scalable network applications. Node.js will go to sleep if there isn't any work being done. This is in contrast with the more common concurrency model today, where OS threads are used. Thread-based networking is slow and difficult to use. Node.js users are not at risk of deadlocking the process because there are no locks. Nearly every function in Node.js performs I/O. The process never blocks unless the I/O is performed using synchronous Node.js methods standard library. Scalable systems are easy to create in Node.js because nothing blocks. Node.js is inspired by and similar to Ruby's Event Machine, and Python's Twisted. Node.js extends the event model a little further. It presents an event loop instead of a library as a runtime construct.

Tornado is a Python web framework that also includes an asynchronous networking library. It was originally developed by FriendFeed. Tornado uses non-blocking network I/O to scale to thousands of open connections. This makes it ideal for long polling and WebSockets as well as other applications that require a long-lasting connection to each user. Tornado is a Python web framework that is unique. It does not use WSGI and is usually run with one thread per process. Although some support for WSGI is provided in the tornado.wsgi module it is not a main focus of development. Most applications should be written to use Tornado’s own interfaces (such WSGI directly) instead of using WSGI. Tornado code is not thread safe. Tornado is integrated into the standard library asyncio and shares the same event loop (by default, Tornado 5.0). Libraries designed for asyncio use can be used with Tornado.

OpenResty®, a fully-fledged web platform, integrates our enhanced Nginx core, LuaJIT and many carefully written Lua libraries. It also includes a lot of high-quality Nginx modules from third-parties. It's designed to allow developers to easily create scalable web apps, web services, or dynamic web gateways. OpenResty®, which makes use of a variety of well-designed Nginx module (mostly developed by the OpenResty Team), effectively transforms the nginx web server into a powerful web application server. Web developers can use the Lua programming languages to script various nginx C modules or Lua modules, and create extremely high-performance web apps that can handle 10K 1000K+ connections within a single box. OpenResty®, which aims to run your server side web app entirely in the Nginx Server, leverages Nginx’s event model to do nonblocking I/O and the HTTP clients.

Cherokee is an open-source web server that's innovative, feature-rich and lightning fast. It's designed for next-generation secure web applications. Cherokee-Admin is a powerful web interface that allows you to configure everything. Cherokee supports the most popular web technologies: FastCGI. SCGI. PHP. uWSGI. SSI. CGI. LDAP. TLS/SSL. HTTP proxying, video streaming. Content caching. traffic shaping. Cherokee can be used on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Solaris and BSD. It is extremely lightweight, efficient, and offers rock-solid stability. One of its many features deserves special mention. It has a user-friendly interface called Cherokee-admin which allows for easy configuration of every feature of the server. This administration interface allows for you to configure the webserver without needing to edit a text file that was written with a particular syntax.

This project aims to do one thing well and do it well. That is, serve static web directories correctly and that is the goal. Other solutions are either too complicated (CGI support, dependencies upon external libraries, etc.). or lack features you expect (TLS, virtual hosts, partial content, not modified since, etc.). Quark attempts to find a middle ground and be as static as possible while still providing functions that are not available in more complex solutions. We believe that the majority of the web doesn't need to be dynamic. The main reason for the web obesity crisis is the increasing complexity of server-side applications. The current trend is to do everything on a server, including parsing and modifying files and databases, creating HTML, and all that using unfit languages such as JavaScript or PHP. This is a security and efficiency nightmare.

H2O is a new generation HTTP Server that responds faster to users and uses less CPU than older web servers. The server is a completely new design and takes full advantage of HTTP/2 features such as server push and prioritized content serving. This will ensure that your website visitors have an exceptional experience. Server-side tweaks allow for full support of dependency and weight-based prioritization. H2O can be installed as a binary package thanks to others. You can try installing the software first using your preferred packaging system and then revert to installing from source. We believe LibreSSL is a better choice to run H2O. LibreSSL is more secure than OpenSSL and also supports new ciphersuites.

Monkey is a lightweight web server and development platform for Linux and OSX. It is extremely scalable and has low CPU consumption. This makes it the ideal solution for embedded devices. It is compatible with ARM, x86, and x64. Monkey is a lightweight, scalable Web Server. It was originally designed for Linux but is also compatible with OSX. It was designed with an emphasis on embedded devices. Because of this, it is scalable by nature and has a low CPU and memory consumption. This makes it a great solution for high-end production servers. Monkey can be used on ARM, x86, and x64 architectures. Monkey uses a hybrid model that has a fixed number threads. Each thread can attend thousands of clients because it is event-driven and based on asynchronous sockets. Lock-free interaction between the worker threads and the scheduler is possible, which avoids race conditions and provides a significant performance advantage over other options.

Tengine is a webserver developed by Taobao. It is Asia's largest e-commerce site. It is built on the Nginx HTTP Server and offers many advanced features. Tengine has been tested on the top 100 websites worldwide, including Taobao. Since December 2011, Tengine has been open-source. The Tengine team is actively developing it. Its core members include people from Taobao and Sogou, as well as other internet companies. Tengine is a community effort, and everyone is welcome to participate. All features of Nginx-1.7.3 can be inherited. It is compatible with Nginx. Use connect HTTP to support forward proxy. Enhanced operations monitoring, including asynchronous log and rollback, DNS caching and memory usage. Unbuffered upload to HTTP and FastCGI backend server, which saves disk I/Os. More load balancing options, such as consistent hashing and session persistence, upstream quality check, and so on.

Cowboy is the ultimate Web server with support for Websocket and HTTP/2. Cowboy is an efficient, small and fast HTTP server for Erlang/OTP. Cowboy is a modern Web stack. This includes HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2, WebSockets, server-sent events, and Webmachine-based HTTPEST. Cowboy includes functions for introspection, tracing, and other useful features that allow developers to see exactly what is happening at any given moment. The modular design makes it easy to add instrumentation. Cowboy is a quality project. It is small in code, efficient in memory and latency, and can be easily embedded in other applications. Cowboy uses clean Erlang code. It has hundreds of tests and is fully compatible with the Dialyzer. It is well-documented and includes a function reference, a guide for users, and many tutorials. It is recommended that you have a basic knowledge of HTTP protocol, but it is not necessary. The guide will cover all aspects of HTTP protocol.

Kestrel is a cross platform web server for ASP.NET Core. Kestrel is the webserver that's included in ASP.NET Core project templates and enabled by default. Kestrel supports HTTPS and HTTP/2 (except for macOS), Opaque upgrades used to enable WebSockets, Unix sockets for high performance behind Nginx. Kestrel can be used on all platforms and versions of.NET Core. Some browsers require explicit permission to trust the local certificate. Project templates enable apps to run on HTTPS by default. They also include HTTPS redirection support and HSTS support. Kestrel's web server offers a variety of constraint configuration options, which are particularly useful for Internet-facing deployments. A separate limit applies to connections that have been upgraded from HTTPS or HTTPS to another protocol (for instance, on a WebSockets Request). The default request body limit is 30,000,000 bytes. This is approximately 28.6 megabytes.

Mongoose transforms a software product, device, or appliance into a web-accessible server accessible via a browser. Mongoose is used to add a Web-accessible control box to a device. This is one of the most popular use cases. Tutorials and ready-to-go examples for common functions like authentication, live logs, and video streaming. Mongoose makes it easy to create APIs to remotely control your device or app via browser, mobile phone or automation tools. Mongoose can be used with a JSON library that is extremely efficient, lightweight, and MIT-licensed. Real-time, full duplex communication via MQTT and Websocket. You can exchange plain data or wrap data in JSON to use JSON - RPC! Mongoose transforms a software product, an appliance, or device into a web-accessible server accessible via a browser. Upload your device data to the cloud server of choice. You can either use a third-party cloud provider or create your own.

OpenLiteSpeed is the Open Source version of LiteSpeed Web Server Enterprise. Both servers are maintained and actively developed by the same team. They also adhere to the same high-quality code standard. OpenLiteSpeed includes all the essential features of LiteSpeed Enterprise and is a sign of our support for the Open Source community. Events driven processes, lower overhead, and great scalability. You can keep your existing hardware. OpenLiteSpeed is compatible with mod_rewrite, so there's no need to learn a new syntax. You can continue to use your existing rules for rewriting. The built-in full-page cache module can be customized and optimized for exceptional user experience. Mod_pagespeed module automatically implements Google's PageSpeed optimization process. Just one click install OpenLiteSpeed, MariaDB, and WordPress on different operating systems.

Hiawatha was designed with security in mind. This has resulted in a webserver that is highly secure in code and features. Hiawatha can prevent SQL injections, XSS, CSRF attacks, and exploit attempts. You can track all your webservers with a specially designed monitoring tool. Hiawatha is easy to set up. Its configuration syntax can be learned quickly. This website contains all the documentation and examples that you will need to configure your webserver in minutes. Hiawatha is a lightweight webserver that still has all the features a modern webserver requires. Hiawatha is ideal for embedded systems and older hardware. To keep resource usage as low as possible, special techniques are used.

Abyss Web Server can be used on Windows, macOS, or Linux. It is small in size, but supports HTTP/2, secure SSL/TLS connections, (HTTPS), automated provisioning of certificates from Let's Encrypt®, (ACME v2) and IPv6. It also supports native ASP.NET, CGI/FastCGI extensions, ISAPI extensions and native ASP.NET. It also supports HTTP/HTTPS/WebSocket forward proxying, eXtended side includes (XSSI), custom error webpages, password protection, anti-leeching, traffic throttling, bandwidth throttling and log rotation. It has an automated antihacking system and a multilingual remote management interface, which makes it as simple as browsing a website.

Apache Tomcat®, an open-source implementation of the Jakarta Servlet and Jakarta Server Pages, Jakarta Expression Languages, Jakarta WebSocket, Jakarta Annotations, Jakarta Authentication specifications, and Jakarta Server Pages is available as an open-source software. These specifications are part the Jakarta EE platform. Apache Tomcat software powers many large-scale, mission critical web applications across a wide range of industries and organisations. Some of these users are listed and their stories can be found on the PoweredBy wiki page. Apache Tomcat Project is proud announce version 10.0.10 of Apache Tomcat. This release implements specifications from the Jakarta EE 9 platform.

Our lightweight Apache alternative saves resources without compromising performance, security, compatibility, and convenience. LiteSpeed Web Server's event-driven architecture doubles the capacity of your Apache servers. It can handle thousands of concurrent clients and consume minimal memory and CPU usage. ModSecurity rules are already in place to protect your servers. You can also take advantage of many built-in antiDDoS features like bandwidth and connection throttling. You can save capital by reducing the number servers required to support your growing web hosting business or online application. Reduce complexity by eliminating the need to use an HTTPS reverse proxy or other 3rd party caching layer. LiteSpeed Web Server can load Apache configuration files directly and is compatible with all Apache features, including ModSecurity and Rewrite Engine.

Seminole, an embeddable webserver softwarekit, is non-invasive, can be retrofitted to existing programs, lightweight, low resource consumption, highly reliable, and secure with proper standards compliance. Seminole is a modular, high level API that's written in C++. It protects the client programmers from complex protocol details and allows them to control low-level operations when needed. The optional Application Framework is available to provide a stateful, message-based development environment. Seminole also offers a powerful discovery service. Seminole's discovery protocol uses IP multicast to locate Seminole instances, even if you don’t know their address. The discovery protocol can also send small amounts of status information periodically.

MacHTTP-js can be viewed on macOS right now. MacHTTP-js is a completely new application that includes features not available in the original release in 1992. MacHTTP-js was written entirely using the node.js platform. This means that it can run on macOS and Windows as well as Linux operating systems. MacHTTP-js provides a fully-featured Web server that can run on 21st-century desktops and servers. A preview release is available for Mac users. The general release for Windows 10 or Linux computers will follow, with support for Docker. This is a fully-featured macOS release. Other O/S versions will be available shortly.