head to head · open source
Navidrome vs gonic
Navidrome has 24,490 GitHub stars, 1,799 forks, 275 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gonic has 2,643 stars, 167 forks, 72 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Navidrome leads on adoption by 827% (24,490 vs 2,643 stars). Navidrome is written in Go under GPL-3.0; gonic is written in Go under GPL-3.0. Navidrome has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, gonic 6%. gonic was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (airsonic, music, music-server), 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
| Navidrome | gonic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 167 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Navidrome if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 Navidrome
Navidrome Music Server Navidrome is an open source web based music collection server and streamer. It gives you freedom to listen to your music collection from any browser or mobile device. It's like your personal Spotify! Note : The master branch may be in an unstable or even broken state during development. Please use releases instead of the master branch in order to get a stable set of binaries. Check out our Live Demo! Any feedback is welcome! If you need/want a new feature, find a bug or think of any way to improve Navidrome, please file a GitHub issue or join the discussion in our Subreddit. If you want to…
read the full Navidrome overview →
About gonic
free software subsonic server API implementation, supporting its many clients features browsing by folder (keeping your full tree intact) see here browsing by tags (using taglib supports mp3, opus, flac, ape, m4a, wav, etc.) on the fly audio transcoding and caching (requires ffmpeg) (thank you spijet) subsonic jukebox mode, for gapless server side audio playback instead of streaming (thank you lxea) support for podcasts (thank you lxea) pretty fast scanning (with my library of 50k tracks, initial scan takes about 10m, and about 6s after incrementally) multiple users, each with their own transcoding preferences…
read the full gonic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Navidrome or gonic more popular?
Navidrome has 24,490 GitHub stars and gonic has 2,643. Navidrome has the larger community by that measure.
Are Navidrome and gonic free?
Both are open source. Navidrome is licensed under GPL-3.0 and gonic under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Navidrome and gonic?
Navidrome is written in Go 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, Navidrome or gonic?
Choose Navidrome if you want the larger community (24,490 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gonic if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.