Newbie question: How does a golang server compare to NGINX and Apache?

<p>I used Apache in the past, for hosting PHP websites. I know very little about NGINX but from what I understand it&#39;s also a web/mail server. </p> <p>How do most developers use Go on the server, do they install the web server software together with the Go program, or do they use the stdlib http/smtp server? </p> <p>What are the pros and cons of using full web servers like Apache and using only the Go libraries?</p> <hr/>**评论：**<br/><br/>justinisrael: <pre><blockquote> <p>I used Apache in the past, for hosting PHP websites. I know very little about NGINX but from what I understand it&#39;s also a web/mail server. </p> </blockquote> <p>Nginx uses an asynchronous model for serving requests which gives it better performance than Apache for certain use cases. It has historically had extremely good capabilities for serving static content, or tons of connections without the memory overhead of tons of threads to service them. </p> <blockquote> <p>How do most developers use Go on the server, do they install the web server software together with the Go program, or do they use the stdlib http/smtp server? </p> </blockquote> <p>Go has a stdlib which contains a production grade net package. It can be used directly as a web server without the need for a reverse proxy. That is, many people simply copy a binary to a server and start it on a port. But others may have reasons for putting a Go server behind a reverse proxy (Apache, nginx, Caddy) </p> <blockquote> <p>What are the pros and cons of using full web servers like Apache and using only the Go libraries?</p> </blockquote> <p>A Go binary can be a full web server on its own without Apache. But if you need to proxy requests to different applications, then maybe a dedicated web server like Apache, nginx, caddy, or other may be desirable to you. Maybe a particular server has very good caching and serving of static content. Or you want to use a load balancer in front of multiple instances of a server. Or you want to handle authentication or encryption before your Go application. </p></pre>DanChm: <pre><p>Thanks, this is great. Cleared things up.</p></pre>thewhitetulip: <pre><p>If you want to learn how to write webapps in Go without using a web framework, you might like reading this tutorial(which I wrote), <a href="http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/thewhitetulip/web-dev-golang-anti-textbook</a></p> <p>http is built into the language and it is an amazing package, hence no framework needed. All you need are a collection of libraries.</p></pre>DocMerlin: <pre><p>Its nearly always faster if using to to NOT use NGINX or Apache along with go. Even if just using it as an SSL terminator, NGINX + Go has a roughly 30% overhead compared to just Go. Apache&#39;s numbers are even worse.</p> <p>However, if you are just trying to serve files or do something where you do not need the Go app layer at all, just use NGINX, its faster by itself than the Go app is by itself.</p> <p>TL;DR: Use Only Go is better than NGINX+GO. Only NGINX is better than only Go.</p></pre>fortytw2: <pre><p>I benchmarked this a few days ago, <a href="https://github.com/fortytw2/dirty-ssl-bench" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fortytw2/dirty-ssl-bench</a> (may be some issues with the bench, as a few people have pointed out, too low load and not using keep-alive between nginx and go), but I think it&#39;s mostly accurate </p></pre>