Yaws is a HTTP high performance 1.1 webserver particularly well suited for dynamic-content web applications. Two separate modes of operations are supported.

  • Standalone mode where Yaws runs as a regular web server daemon. This is the default mode.
  • Embedded mode where Yaws runs as an embedded web server in another Erlang application.

Yaws is entirely written in Erlang furthermore it is a multithreaded webserver where one Erlang light weight process is used to handle each client.

The main advantages of yaws compared to other Web technologies are performance and elegance. The performance comes from the underlying Erlang system and its ability to handle concurrent processes in an efficient way. Its elegance comes from Erlang as well. Web applications do not have to be written in ugly adhoc languages.

Download Yaws for Windows and Unix.