head to head · open source
imgui vs cherry
imgui has 76,491 GitHub stars, 12,072 forks, 1,227 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. cherry has 818 stars, 142 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. imgui leads on adoption by 9,251% (76,491 vs 818 stars). imgui is written in C++ under MIT; cherry is written in Go under MIT. imgui has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, cherry 17%. imgui was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (game-engine, gamedev), 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 | cherry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 76K | ★ 818 |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-08-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 142 |
| 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 cherry if
- You want the cherry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cherry 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 cherry
Cherry is a Go game server framework built on the Actor Model for teams building MMO, SLG, and RPG backends that need to scale to millions of players across distributed nodes.
read the full cherry overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is imgui or cherry more popular?
imgui has 76,491 GitHub stars and cherry has 818. imgui has the larger community by that measure.
Are imgui and cherry free?
Both are open source. imgui is licensed under MIT and cherry under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between imgui and cherry?
imgui is written in C++ and cherry 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 cherry?
Choose imgui if you want the larger community (76,491 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cherry if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.