head to head · open source
Appwrite vs xmake
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars, 5,725 forks, 1,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. xmake has 12,220 stars, 954 forks, 255 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Appwrite leads on adoption by 370% (57,400 vs 12,220 stars). Appwrite is written in PHP under BSD-3-Clause; xmake is written in Lua under Apache-2.0. Appwrite has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, xmake 8%. Appwrite was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Appwrite | xmake | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 12K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | PHP | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.7K | ⑂ 954 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Appwrite if
- You weight community size — 57K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick xmake if
- You want the xmake feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and xmake fits your workflow better
About Appwrite
Appwrite is an open source backend platform that consolidates infrastructure services—authentication, databases, storage, functions, messaging, hosting, and real time capabilities—into a single, unified system. It runs as a self hosted service or via a managed cloud offering (Appwrite Cloud), targeting developers who want to avoid assembling and maintaining disparate backend tools.
read the full Appwrite overview →
About xmake
Xmake is a cross platform build utility and package manager, written in Lua and licensed under Apache 2.0, that takes a single xmake.lua project file and turns it into builds for desktop, mobile, BSD, Wasm and other targets — it is aimed at C, C++, Objective C and mixed toolchain developers who want Make/Ninja style building, CMake/Meson style project generation, and Vcpkg/Conan style dependency handling from one tool.
read the full xmake overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Appwrite or xmake more popular?
Appwrite has 57,400 GitHub stars and xmake has 12,220. Appwrite has the larger community by that measure.
Are Appwrite and xmake free?
Both are open source. Appwrite is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and xmake under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Appwrite and xmake?
Appwrite is written in PHP and xmake 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, Appwrite or xmake?
Choose Appwrite if you want the larger community (57,400 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose xmake if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.