head to head · open source
agones vs mcrcon
agones has 7,053 GitHub stars, 945 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mcrcon has 1,085 stars, 126 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped 10 months ago. agones leads on adoption by 550% (7,053 vs 1,085 stars). agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0; mcrcon is written in C under Zlib. agones has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, mcrcon 12%. 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 | mcrcon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Zlib |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2025-12-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 945 | ⑂ 126 |
| 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 mcrcon if
- You want the mcrcon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and mcrcon 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 mcrcon
mcrcon is a console based Rcon client for Minecraft that lets server administrators send remote administration commands and run server maintenance scripts from a Linux or Windows terminal.
read the full mcrcon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is agones or mcrcon more popular?
agones has 7,053 GitHub stars and mcrcon has 1,085. agones has the larger community by that measure.
Are agones and mcrcon free?
Both are open source. agones is licensed under Apache-2.0 and mcrcon under Zlib. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between agones and mcrcon?
agones is written in Go and mcrcon in C. 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 mcrcon?
Choose agones if you want the larger community (7,053 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose mcrcon if its feature set, stack or Zlib licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.