head to head · open source
Kodi vs songloft
Kodi has 21,229 GitHub stars, 6,598 forks, 466 open issues and last shipped yesterday. songloft has 1,746 stars, 143 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Kodi leads on adoption by 1,116% (21,229 vs 1,746 stars). Kodi is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; songloft is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Kodi has attracted 31% as many forks as stars, songloft 8%. 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 | songloft | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.6K | ⑂ 143 |
| 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 songloft if
- You want the songloft 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 songloft 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 songloft
Songloft is a self hosted music server written in Go under Apache 2.0. It manages music files the user already owns and provides no built in copyrighted content. The project was renamed from MiMusic at version 2.0, with old GitHub and Docker paths kept as redirects for at least one year.
read the full songloft overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Kodi or songloft more popular?
Kodi has 21,229 GitHub stars and songloft has 1,746. Kodi has the larger community by that measure.
Are Kodi and songloft free?
Both are open source. Kodi has no licence declared in this registry, and songloft is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Kodi and songloft?
Kodi is written in C++ and songloft 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 songloft?
Choose Kodi if you want the larger community (21,229 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose songloft if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.