head to head · open source
imgui vs agones
imgui has 76,271 GitHub stars, 12,047 forks, 1,227 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. agones has 7,032 stars, 943 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped today. imgui leads on adoption by 985% (76,271 vs 7,032 stars). imgui is written in C++ under MIT; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. imgui has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, agones 13%. agones was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (game-development), 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
| imgui | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 943 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick imgui if
- You weight community size — 76K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- 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 imgui
Dear ImGui is a bloat free, MIT licensed graphical user interface library for C++ that outputs optimized vertex buffers for rendering inside 3D pipeline enabled applications, and it is aimed at programmers building content creation, visualization, and debug tools rather than at developers shipping consumer facing UI.
read the full imgui 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 imgui or agones more popular?
imgui has 76,271 GitHub stars and agones has 7,032. imgui has the larger community by that measure.
Are imgui and agones free?
Both are open source. imgui is licensed under MIT and agones under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between imgui and agones?
imgui is written in C++ 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, imgui or agones?
Choose imgui if you want the larger community (76,271 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose agones if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.