head to head · open source
gofr vs debug
gofr has 20,916 GitHub stars, 1,759 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debug has 11,454 stars, 991 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. gofr leads on adoption by 83% (20,916 vs 11,454 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; debug is written in JavaScript under MIT. gofr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, debug 9%. gofr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (logging), 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
| gofr | debug | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-04-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 991 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gofr if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick debug if
- You want the debug feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and debug fits your workflow better
About gofr
GoFr is an opinionated Go framework for building microservices, aimed at Go developers and platform teams who want HTTP, gRPC, data access and observability built in rather than assembled from separate libraries.
About debug
debug is a tiny, MIT licensed JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique, and it is aimed at JavaScript developers and library authors who want to turn debug output on and off by namespace instead of editing or deleting logging statements.
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or debug more popular?
gofr has 20,916 GitHub stars and debug has 11,454. gofr has the larger community by that measure.
Are gofr and debug free?
Both are open source. gofr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and debug under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gofr and debug?
gofr is written in Go and debug in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gofr or debug?
Choose gofr if you want the larger community (20,916 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.