Cowboy is an open-source, small, fast, and modular HTTP server designed to handle a large number of simultaneous connections efficiently. Built on top of the Erlang programming language, it provides a feature-rich and lightweight web server that is optimized for low latency and high concurrency. Frequently used in real-time web applications, Cowboy offers support for WebSockets, HTTP/2, and RESTful services.

Apache provides a web server software provided by Apache Software Foundation. It is open-source software that can be downloaded for free. Its range of features includes Unix threading, a new build system, multiprotocol support, and support for non-unix platforms along with IPv6 support.
It also comes with Apache filtering, Multilanguage error responses, native windows NT Unicode support along with a simple configuration. Apache server is recognized for its flexibility. It also has an active community and gets frequent updates. It provides extensive documentation to its users as well. Apache server is used by well-known companies such as IBM, eBay, Adobe, LinkedIn, Facebook and GTMetrix.

Comparison Cowboy vs Apache