head to head · open source
colyseus vs agones
colyseus has 7,311 GitHub stars, 665 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped today. agones has 7,032 stars, 943 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped today. colyseus leads on adoption by 4% (7,311 vs 7,032 stars). colyseus is written in TypeScript under MIT; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. colyseus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, agones 13%. colyseus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (game-server, multiplayer), 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
| colyseus | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.3K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 665 | ⑂ 943 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick colyseus if
- You weight community size — 7.3K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agones if
- You want the agones feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and agones fits your workflow better
About colyseus
Colyseus is an MIT licensed authoritative multiplayer framework for Node.js that provides synchronizable data structures, room based matchmaking, and client SDKs for TypeScript, React, Unity, Godot, GameMaker, Defold, Construct, Haxe, and C, aimed at developers building realtime and turn based multiplayer games.
read the full colyseus overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colyseus or agones more popular?
colyseus has 7,311 GitHub stars and agones has 7,032. colyseus has the larger community by that measure.
Are colyseus and agones free?
Both are open source. colyseus is licensed under MIT and agones under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colyseus and agones?
colyseus is written in TypeScript and agones 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, colyseus or agones?
Choose colyseus if you want the larger community (7,311 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose agones if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.