Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to ZeroHTTPd: A web server to teach Linux performance, with benchmarks

Articles in this series Part I. Iterative ServersPart II. Forking ServersPart III. Pre-forking ServersPart IV. Threaded ServersPart V. Pre-threaded ServersPart VI: poll-based serverPart VII: epoll-…

ZeroHTTPd is an educational web server designed to teach Linux performance concepts. Created for developers and students learning about system optimization, it includes built-in benchmarks to demonstrate performance… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. ZeroHTTPd: A web server to teach Linux performance, with benchmarks launched in 2019; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

1. 1
   Low-Level Academy, an explorable systems programming course▲419

   Introduction to UDP: sockets, frames, and data encoding. We build a Rust client for a simple name server that converts domain names into IP addresses.

   2020 · lowlvl.org · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Hydrogen, a multithread non-blocking Linux server framework in Rust▲154

   Multithreaded, non-blocking Linux server framework in Rust - nathansizemore/hydrogen

   2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

3. 3IR
   Initial release of H2O, and why HTTPD performance will matter in 2015▲251

   Happy Holidays! Today I am delighted to announce the first release of H2O, version 0.9.0; this is a christmas gift from me. github.com/h...

   2014 · blog.kazuhooku.com · its alternatives →

4. 4UT
   unsafehttp – tiny web server from scratch in C, running on an orange pi▲87

   Hey HN, I wanted to get more familiar with C programming, *nix socket programming and C compilation, so I wrote this "web" ""server"". It's running on a tiny SBC in my office, and there's as little as possible between you and it. Happy for you to try and break it, hopefully with something more interesting than a DoS though :) Please let me know if you find any issues.

   2025 · unsafehttp.benren.au · its alternatives →

5. 5
   A “living” Linux process with no memory▲312

   A "living" Linux process with no memory. Contribute to izabera/zeromaps development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   A little web server in C▲178

   A little web server written in C for Linux. Supports: CGI, Reverse Proxy. Single threaded using I/O multiplexing (select).

   2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Micro HTTP server in 22 lines of C▲223

   This post is from a protected account.

   2021 · twitter.com · its alternatives →

8. 8
   A pure bash web server. No netcat, socat, etc.▲224

   A purely bash web server, no socat, netcat, etc... - GitHub - dzove855/Bash-web-server: A purely bash web server, no socat, netcat, etc...

   2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

9. 9
   AsmHTTPd – The tiniest webserver ever written (Linux, x86_64 assembly)▲8

   A minimalist HTTP server for Linux, written in x86_64 assembly - jcalvinowens/asmhttpd

   2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    HTTP server written in x64 assembly (x86-64)▲12

    A minimalist HTTP server for Linux, written in x86_64 assembly - jcalvinowens/asmhttpd

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    Free Server▲115

    A free web server to play, learn, experiment, whatever

    2014 · bizag.com · its alternatives →

12. 12
    A UDP to TCP proxy server for sending HTTP requests with zero latency▲146

    A UDP to TCP proxy server for sending HTTP requests with zero roundtrips - TimeToogo/ff-proxy

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

13. 13
    Open-source non-blocking NIO Java HTTP Server▲59

    A full featured, stand-alone, high-performance HTTP server and client written entirely in plain Java - FusionAuth/java-http

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    The HTTP Garden – A Parser Vulnerability Research Tool▲75

    I wrote this tool during an internship at Narf Industries in 2023. It's a REPL that allows for quickly developing, testing, and fuzzing for HTTP request smuggling attack payloads. I started the internship having never worked with web servers, and have now found over 100 HTTP implementation bugs. I attribute this mostly to the ease of experimentation in the Garden. REPL-oriented fuzzing is just a really good interface for finding parsing bugs. It's pretty neat to able to run a differential fuzzer, categorize and display all the discovered discrepancies, then let a human pick through them and…

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

15. 15DB
    Dependency-based prioritization makes HTTP/2 much faster than SPDY▲67

    Background HTTP/2 provides two methods to prioritize streams (e.g. files being served). One method is called weight-based prioritizatio...

    2015 · blog.kazuhooku.com · its alternatives →

16. 16
    HTTP Prompt▲128

    An interactive command-line HTTP client

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Deadwire-HTTPD A triple-threaded x86-64 assembly static server▲5

    A high-performance static HTTP/1.0 server driven by a bespoke triple-thread architecture (Supervisor, Acceptor, Engine) delivering nanosecond-level processing using raw x86-64 assembly and pure Linux syscalls.

    Jul 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Second State Serverless FaaS▲92

    High-performance serverless functions for Rust & WebAssembly

    2020 · secondstate.io · its alternatives →

19. 19
    LEAR – A simple and fast HTTP server to serve static resources▲66

    Linux Engine for Asset Retrieval - speed-profiled C HTTP server - Glorf/lear

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

20. 20
    I'm rewriting a web server written in Rust for speed and ease of use▲68

    Hello! I got quite some feedback on a web server I'm building, so I'm rewriting the server to be faster and easier to use. I (and maybe some other contributors?) have optimized the web server performance, especially for static file serving and reverse proxying (the last use case I optimized for very recently). I also picked a different configuration format and specification, what I believe is easier to write. Automatic TLS is also enabled by default out of the box, you don't need to even enable it manually, like it was in the original server I was building. Yesterday, I released the first…

    2025 · ferron.sh · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Kyushu – A self-hostable WASM sandbox for JavaScript workers▲89

    A self-hostable Wasm sandbox for JavaScript workers.

    Jun 2026 · kyushu.dev · its alternatives →

22. 22
    Hellepoll is a blazingly-fast async HTTP server written in C++▲35

    This is based on an approach I made for a very high performance message and video multiplexing server. The project died, but I'm glad I get to share the a basic version with some http test code now. I admit this is the second time I've tried to show this off here today; I posted earlier but it got lost when no-one was watching :(

    2011 · github.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Zero – DX focused non framework to interact with the DOM▲33

    Experimental jsxdom. Contribute to nhh/zero development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

24. 24
    Zero – A no-framework approach to modern front end development▲6

    Experimental jsxdom. Contribute to nhh/zero development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →