head to head · open source
azerothcore-wotlk vs pitaya
azerothcore-wotlk has 9,148 GitHub stars, 3,948 forks, 2,445 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pitaya has 2,846 stars, 549 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. azerothcore-wotlk leads on adoption by 221% (9,148 vs 2,846 stars). azerothcore-wotlk is written in C++ under GPL-2.0; pitaya is written in Go under MIT. azerothcore-wotlk has attracted 43% as many forks as stars, pitaya 19%. azerothcore-wotlk was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (game, 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
| azerothcore-wotlk | pitaya | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.1K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 549 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick azerothcore-wotlk if
- You weight community size — 9.1K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick pitaya if
- You want the pitaya feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pitaya fits your workflow better
About azerothcore-wotlk
AzerothCore Build Status Introduction AzerothCore is an open source game server application and framework designed for hosting massively multiplayer online role playing games (MMORPGs). It is based on the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) and seeks to recreate the gameplay experience of the original game from patch 3.3.5a. The original code is based on MaNGOS, TrinityCore, and SunwellCore and has since then had extensive development to improve stability, in game mechanics, and modularity to the game. AC has also grown into a community driven project with a significant number of contributors and developers…
read the full azerothcore-wotlk overview →
About pitaya
pitaya [![Build Status][7]][8] [![Coverage Status][9]][10] [![GoDoc][1]][2] [![Docs][11]][12] [![Go Report Card][3]][4] [![MIT licensed][5]][6] [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: LICENSE [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: Pitaya is an simple, fast and lightweight game server framework with clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and others through the C SDK. It provides a basic development framework for distributed multiplayer games and server side applications. Getting Started Prerequisites Go = 1.16 etcd (optional, used for service discovery) nats (optional, used for sending and receiving rpc)…
read the full pitaya overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is azerothcore-wotlk or pitaya more popular?
azerothcore-wotlk has 9,148 GitHub stars and pitaya has 2,846. azerothcore-wotlk has the larger community by that measure.
Are azerothcore-wotlk and pitaya free?
Both are open source. azerothcore-wotlk is licensed under GPL-2.0 and pitaya under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between azerothcore-wotlk and pitaya?
azerothcore-wotlk is written in C++ and pitaya 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, azerothcore-wotlk or pitaya?
Choose azerothcore-wotlk if you want the larger community (9,148 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose pitaya if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.