head to head · open source
bevy vs Excalibur
bevy has 49,474 GitHub stars, 5,010 forks, 3,418 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Excalibur has 2,361 stars, 228 forks, 36 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bevy leads on adoption by 1,995% (49,474 vs 2,361 stars). bevy is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Excalibur is written in TypeScript under BSD-2-Clause. bevy has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Excalibur 10%. Excalibur was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (game-development, game-engine, gamedev), 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
| bevy | Excalibur | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 49K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-2-Clause |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 228 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick bevy if
- You weight community size — 49K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Excalibur if
- You want the Excalibur feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Excalibur fits your workflow better
About bevy
What is Bevy? Bevy is a refreshingly simple data driven game engine built in Rust. It is free and open source forever! WARNING Bevy is still in the early stages of development. Important features are missing. Documentation is sparse. A new version of Bevy containing breaking changes to the API is released approximately once every 3 months. We provide migration guides, but we can't guarantee migrations will always be easy. Use only if you are willing to work in this environment. MSRV: Bevy relies heavily on improvements in the Rust language and compiler. As a result, the Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV) is…
About Excalibur
[![Discord][discord badge]][discord url] [discord badge]: [discord url]: Excalibur is a free game engine written in TypeScript for making 2D games in HTML5 canvas. Our goal is to make it easier for you to create 2D HTML/JS games, whether you're new to game development or you're an experienced game developer. We take care of all of the boilerplate engine code, cross platform targeting (using browserstack 😎), and more! Use as much or as little as you need! Excalibur is an open source project licensed under the 2 clause BSD license (this means you can use it in commercial projects!). It's free and always will be…
read the full Excalibur overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is bevy or Excalibur more popular?
bevy has 49,474 GitHub stars and Excalibur has 2,361. bevy has the larger community by that measure.
Are bevy and Excalibur free?
Both are open source. bevy is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Excalibur under BSD-2-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between bevy and Excalibur?
bevy is written in Rust and Excalibur in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, bevy or Excalibur?
Choose bevy if you want the larger community (49,474 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Excalibur if its feature set, stack or BSD-2-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.