head to head · open source
MonoGame vs agones
MonoGame has 14,602 GitHub stars, 3,121 forks, 766 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agones has 7,099 stars, 956 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. MonoGame leads on adoption by 106% (14,602 vs 7,099 stars). MonoGame is written in C# under a custom or non-standard licence; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. MonoGame has attracted 21% 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
| MonoGame | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 7.1K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C# | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 956 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick MonoGame if
- You weight community size — 15K 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 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 MonoGame
MonoGame One framework for creating powerful cross platform games Supported Platforms • Resources • Samples • Support and Contributions • Source Code • Helpful Links • License Overview MonoGame is a simple and powerful .NET framework for creating games for desktop PCs, video game consoles, and mobile devices using the C programming language. It has been successfully used to create games such as Streets of Rage 4, Carrion, Celeste, Stardew Valley, and many others. It is an open source re implementation of the discontinued Microsoft's XNA Framework. Supported Platforms We support a growing list of platforms across…
read the full MonoGame overview →
About agones
Agones is a library for hosting, running and scaling dedicated game servers on Kubernetes. Agones, is derived from the Greek word agōn which roughly translates to “contest”, “competition at games” and “gathering”. (source) Why does this project exist? Agones replaces usual bespoke or proprietary cluster management and game server scaling solutions with a Kubernetes cluster that includes the Agones custom Kubernetes Controller and matching Custom Resource Definitions for GameServers , Fleets and more. With Agones, Kubernetes gets native abilities to create, run, manage and scale dedicated game server processes…
read the full agones overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is MonoGame or agones more popular?
MonoGame has 14,602 GitHub stars and agones has 7,099. MonoGame has the larger community by that measure.
Are MonoGame and agones free?
Both are open source. MonoGame has no licence declared in this registry, and agones is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between MonoGame and agones?
MonoGame 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, MonoGame or agones?
Choose MonoGame if you want the larger community (14,602 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose agones if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.