Best NGINX Unit Alternatives & Competitors in 2025

An open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies

Key Apache Tomcat features:

Open Source Community Support Lightweight Integration with Popular Frameworks

Open Source

JBoss is Red Hats Java EE 5-compliant (soon Java EE 6-compliant) application server.

Key JBoss features:

Open Source Java EE Compliance Community Support Modular Architecture

Gunicorn is a Python WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX.

Key Gunicorn features:

Performance Simplicity Compatibility Prefork Model

Open Source

Payara Server is a fully supported, developer-friendly, open source application server. Innovative, cloud-native, optimized for production deployments. Jakarta EE & MicroProfile compatible.

Key Payara Server features:

Open Source Jakarta EE Support Payara Micro Commercial Support

Open Source freemium

Jetty is a highly scalable modular servlet engine and http server that natively supports many modern protocols like SPDY and WebSockets.

Key Eclipse Jetty features:

Lightweight Embeddable Scalable Active Development

LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is a high-performance Apache drop-in replacement.

Key LiteSpeed Web Server features:

Performance Built-in Caching Security Easy Apache Replacement

Alternative Java platform built from the ground up. It is minimalistic, boilerplate-free, and lightning-fast. ActiveJ has minimum third-party dependencies, yet features a full stack of technologies with an async programming model and powerful DI.

Open Source

A high performance free open source web server powering busiest sites on the Internet.

Key nginx features:

High Performance Efficiency Versatility Security

Open Source

Phusion Passenger is a multi-language (Ruby, Python, Node) web & app server which can integrate into Apache and Nginx

Key Phusion Passenger features:

Ease of Use Performance Integration Multi-Language Support

Open Source

ActiveInject is a lightweight and powerful dependency injection library with ultimate performance and no third-party dependencies

The Spring Framework provides a comprehensive programming and configuration model for modern Java-based enterprise applications - on any kind of deployment platform.

Key Spring Framework features:

Comprehensive Ecosystem Inversion of Control (IoC) Container Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) Spring Boot

Open Source

GlassFish v3, built by the GlassFish community, is the first compatible implementation of the Java...

Key Glassfish features:

Open Source Enterprise Features Java EE Reference Implementation Modular Architecture

Distributed transactions middleware, application server and Oracle Tuxedo alternative

Open Source freemium €6500.0 / One-off (Single operating system instance)