head to head · open source
colyseus vs pitaya
colyseus has 7,312 GitHub stars, 665 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pitaya has 2,829 stars, 545 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. colyseus leads on adoption by 158% (7,312 vs 2,829 stars). colyseus is written in TypeScript under MIT; pitaya is written in Go under MIT. colyseus has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, pitaya 19%. colyseus was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| colyseus | pitaya | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.3K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 665 | ⑂ 545 |
| 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 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 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 pitaya
Pitaya is an open source, MIT licensed game server framework written in Go that provides clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and other platforms through a shared C SDK, aimed at teams building distributed multiplayer games and other server side applications.
read the full pitaya overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is colyseus or pitaya more popular?
colyseus has 7,312 GitHub stars and pitaya has 2,829. colyseus has the larger community by that measure.
Are colyseus and pitaya free?
Both are open source. colyseus is licensed under MIT and pitaya under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between colyseus and pitaya?
colyseus is written in TypeScript 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, colyseus or pitaya?
Choose colyseus if you want the larger community (7,312 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pitaya if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.