head to head · open source
cobalt vs galene
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. galene has 1,404 stars, 195 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 2,985% (43,316 vs 1,404 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; galene is written in Go under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, galene 14%. galene 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
| cobalt | galene | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | Go |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 195 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick galene if
- You want the galene feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and galene fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About galene
Galene is a videoconference server. It lives in the Go, WebRTC, SFU, video conferencing, file sharing, and webapp ecosystem. It is listed as Business Software / Collaboration & Communication. It is described as a fully featured, easy to deploy videoconferencing system requiring very moderate server resources. It gives browser users named groups, operator permissions, and file sharing. It solves the problem of running video meetings without a heavy hosted stack. It also supports extension, because the README points to client, protocol, and administrative API documents.
read the full galene overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or galene more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and galene has 1,404. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and galene free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and galene under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and galene?
cobalt is written in Svelte and galene 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, cobalt or galene?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose galene if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.