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