head to head · open source
agones vs stendhal
agones has 7,059 GitHub stars, 946 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. stendhal has 703 stars, 226 forks, 143 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. agones leads on adoption by 904% (7,059 vs 703 stars). agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0; stendhal is written in Java under GPL-2.0. agones has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, stendhal 32%. 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 | stendhal | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.1K | ★ 703 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-10-07 | 2026-07-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 946 | ⑂ 226 |
| 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 stendhal if
- You want the stendhal feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and stendhal 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 stendhal
Stendhal is a free, open source multiplayer online adventure game (MORPG) written in Java, playable by anyone with a web browser, an Android device, or a desktop with Java installed.
read the full stendhal overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is agones or stendhal more popular?
agones has 7,059 GitHub stars and stendhal has 703. agones has the larger community by that measure.
Are agones and stendhal free?
Both are open source. agones is licensed under Apache-2.0 and stendhal under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between agones and stendhal?
agones is written in Go and stendhal in Java. 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 stendhal?
Choose agones if you want the larger community (7,059 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose stendhal if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.