head to head · open source
Kodi vs gonic
Kodi has 21,229 GitHub stars, 6,598 forks, 466 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gonic has 2,544 stars, 156 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kodi leads on adoption by 734% (21,229 vs 2,544 stars). Kodi is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; gonic is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Kodi has attracted 31% as many forks as stars, gonic 6%. Kodi 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
| Kodi | gonic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 156 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Kodi if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gonic if
- You want the gonic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and gonic fits your workflow better
About Kodi
Kodi is a free and open source home theater and media center application, also described as an entertainment hub for digital media. It is written mainly in C++ and distributed as a native application for Android, BSD, Linux, macOS, iOS, tvOS, and Windows, with support for many common processor architectures. The project began in 2003 and is run by the XBMC Foundation, with development and support carried out by volunteers worldwide.
About gonic
Gonic is a music streaming server and a free software implementation of the Subsonic server API. It lives in the self hosted media streaming ecosystem, where users want to keep a personal music library on their own hardware while using Subsonic compatible clients.
read the full gonic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kodi or gonic more popular?
Kodi has 21,229 GitHub stars and gonic has 2,544. Kodi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kodi and gonic free?
Both are open source. Kodi has no licence declared in this registry, and gonic is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Kodi and gonic?
Kodi is written in C++ and gonic 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, Kodi or gonic?
Choose Kodi if you want the larger community (21,229 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose gonic if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.