head to head · open source
agones vs canary
agones has 7,059 GitHub stars, 946 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped today. canary has 652 stars, 911 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. agones leads on adoption by 983% (7,059 vs 652 stars). agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0; canary is written in Lua under GPL-2.0. agones has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, canary 140%. agones was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (game-server), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| agones | canary | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 652 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 946 | ⑂ 911 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick agones if
- You weight community size — 7.1K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick canary if
- You want the canary feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and canary fits your workflow better
About agones
Agones is an open source library for hosting, running and scaling dedicated game servers on Kubernetes, built for game developers, platform engineers and live ops teams that need multiplayer server capacity without bespoke cluster management.
read the full agones overview →
About canary
Canary is a free, open source MMORPG server emulator for the OpenTibia community, written in C++20 and Lua, intended for server operators and developers who want to run their own Tibia style game world.
read the full canary overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is agones or canary more popular?
agones has 7,059 GitHub stars and canary has 652. agones has the larger community by that measure.
Are agones and canary free?
Both are open source. agones is licensed under Apache-2.0 and canary under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between agones and canary?
agones is written in Go and canary in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, agones or canary?
Choose agones if you want the larger community (7,059 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose canary if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.