head to head · open source
agones vs goworld
agones has 7,042 GitHub stars, 944 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goworld has 2,718 stars, 474 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. agones leads on adoption by 159% (7,042 vs 2,718 stars). agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0; goworld is written in Go under Apache-2.0. agones has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, goworld 17%. agones was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (game-server, golang), 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 | goworld | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.0K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2025-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 944 | ⑂ 474 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick agones if
- You weight community size — 7.0K 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 goworld if
- You want the goworld feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and goworld 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 goworld
GoWorld is an Apache 2.0 licensed, scalable distributed game server engine written in Go, with hot swapping of game logic, aimed at developers and studios that run persistent multiplayer game worlds.
read the full goworld overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is agones or goworld more popular?
agones has 7,042 GitHub stars and goworld has 2,718. agones has the larger community by that measure.
Are agones and goworld free?
Both are open source. agones is licensed under Apache-2.0 and goworld under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between agones and goworld?
agones is written in Go and goworld in Go. 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 goworld?
Choose agones if you want the larger community (7,042 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose goworld if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.