head to head · open source
gofr vs debug
gofr has 20,820 GitHub stars, 1,789 forks, 132 open issues and last shipped yesterday. debug has 11,456 stars, 997 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. gofr leads on adoption by 82% (20,820 vs 11,456 stars). gofr is written in Go under Apache-2.0; debug is written in JavaScript under MIT. gofr has attracted 9% 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 997 |
| 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
Go Fr GoFr: An Opinionated Microservice Development Framework Listed in the CNCF Landscape 🎯 Goal GoFr is designed to simplify microservice development , with a key focus on Kubernetes deployment and out of the box observability . While capable of building generic applications, microservices remain at its core. 💡 Key Features 1. Simple API Syntax 2. REST Standards by Default 3. Configuration Management 4. Observability (Logs, Traces, Metrics) 5. Inbuilt Auth Middleware & Custom Middleware Support 6. gRPC Support 7. HTTP Service with Circuit Breaker Support 8. Pub/Sub 9. Health Check for All Datasources 10…
About debug
debug A tiny JavaScript debugging utility modelled after Node.js core's debugging technique. Works in Node.js and web browsers. Installation Usage debug exposes a function; simply pass this function the name of your module, and it will return a decorated version of console.error for you to pass debug statements to. This will allow you to toggle the debug output for different parts of your module as well as the module as a whole. Example app.js : Example worker.js : The DEBUG environment variable is then used to enable these based on space or comma delimited names. Here are some examples: Windows command prompt…
read the full debug overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gofr or debug more popular?
gofr has 20,820 GitHub stars and debug has 11,456. 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 (20,820 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose debug if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.