head to head · open source
OpenRA vs agones
OpenRA has 17,408 GitHub stars, 3,048 forks, 1,598 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. agones has 7,040 stars, 944 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenRA leads on adoption by 147% (17,408 vs 7,040 stars). OpenRA is written in C# under GPL-3.0; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. OpenRA has attracted 18% 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.
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
| OpenRA | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C# | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 944 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenRA if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 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 OpenRA
OpenRA is a libre, free and open source real time strategy game engine written in C with SDL and OpenGL, built for players, mappers and modders who want to run and extend early Westwood classics such as Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn and Dune 2000 on Windows, Linux, BSD and Mac OS X.
read the full OpenRA overview →
About agones
Agones is an open source library for hosting, running and scaling dedicated game servers on Kubernetes, built for game developers, platform engineers and live ops teams that need multiplayer server capacity without bespoke cluster management.
read the full agones overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenRA or agones more popular?
OpenRA has 17,408 GitHub stars and agones has 7,040. OpenRA has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenRA and agones free?
Both are open source. OpenRA is licensed under GPL-3.0 and agones under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenRA and agones?
OpenRA 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, OpenRA or agones?
Choose OpenRA if you want the larger community (17,408 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose agones if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.