head to head · open source
core vs koala
core has 8,837 GitHub stars, 2,064 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. koala has 3,574 stars, 456 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. core leads on adoption by 147% (8,837 vs 3,574 stars). core is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0; koala is written in Ruby under MIT. core has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, koala 13%. core 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
| core | koala | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.8K | ★ 3.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | PHP | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 456 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick core if
- You weight community size — 8.8K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick koala if
- You want the koala feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and koala fits your workflow better
About core
ownCloud Core ownCloud Core is the server side component of ownCloud Classic, providing file storage, synchronization, and sharing trusted by over 200 million users worldwide. It includes WebDAV, CalDAV, and CardDAV servers, a plugin architecture for apps, user and group management, encryption support, external storage backends, and a comprehensive REST API. The server runs on PHP with support for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases. Part of ownCloud Classic This is the main repository for ownCloud Classic. It is the foundation that apps like Activity, Calendar, Contacts, and many others extend. The…
About koala
Koala ==== Koala is a Facebook library for Ruby, supporting the Graph API (including the batch requests and photo uploads), the Marketing API, the Atlas API, realtime updates, test users, and OAuth validation. We wrote Koala with four goals: Lightweight: Koala should be as light and simple as Facebook’s own libraries, providing API accessors and returning simple JSON. Fast: Koala should, out of the box, be quick. Out of the box, we use Facebook's faster read only servers when possible and if available, the Typhoeus gem to make snappy Facebook requests. Of course, that brings us to our next topic: Flexible: Koala…
read the full koala overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is core or koala more popular?
core has 8,837 GitHub stars and koala has 3,574. core has the larger community by that measure.
Are core and koala free?
Both are open source. core is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and koala under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between core and koala?
core is written in PHP and koala in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, core or koala?
Choose core if you want the larger community (8,837 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose koala if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.