Nginx versus LiteSpeed

First of all, what is a web server?

So, a web server is a software installed on your server. Receiving HTTP requests, processing it and sending back response is its responsibility. Additional programs like PHP is required by a web server to obtain the output.

Nginx versus LiteSpeed

Nginx

Nginx [ pronounced as engine x], is an open-source web server. Originally created by Igor Sysoev (Russia), Nginx is used by companies like Facebook, Autodesk, Twitter and more.

It is used as HTTP cache, reverse proxy and load balancer.

Nginx has an open-source “Nginx” and “Nginx Plus”(paid version)

Nginx is known to outperform other web servers in benchmark tests with its source in performance optimization.

LiteSpeed

Estimated to be used by 6.4% of websites, LiteSpeed is one of the most popular web server software.

It is compatible with apache features and uses the same configuration as Apache HTTP Server. LiteSpeed works as a drop-in replacement for Apache because it can read and load .htaccess files

Recently, an open-source version of LiteSpeed, OpenLiteSpeed, was released.

Performance

A web server which is easy to use is essential. But it means nothing if the webserver does not perform well.

TTFB – ‘Time to First Byte’ is the time taken by the browser to get a response from the server.

OpenLiteSpeed has a slightly better TTFB, compared to Nginx. There is not much difference between them.

Stress test – helps in determining how a web server responds to heavy traffic in a short period.

With 10k requests per second, almost 50% of the request timed out in Nginx. In OpenLiteSpeed, the timed-out requests were only 6%.

With an average response time of 2.8 seconds, OpenLiteSpeed has shown better performance.

Market share

Nginx is leading in the top 10k, 100k and 1M websites. It has grabbed the top position in the entire web with almost 12% websites using Nginx.

LiteSpeed, despite its recent growth, is ranked behind Nginx in the market shares.

Websites

Nginx has better coverage of website categories. This includes Electronics and Technology, Entertainment, Science and education, and more.

LiteSpeed has not taken over Nginx’s rank in this section yet.