head to head · open source
OpenRA vs zinx
OpenRA has 17,408 GitHub stars, 3,048 forks, 1,598 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. zinx has 7,765 stars, 1,262 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. OpenRA leads on adoption by 124% (17,408 vs 7,765 stars). OpenRA is written in C# under GPL-3.0; zinx is written in Go under MIT. OpenRA has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, zinx 16%. OpenRA 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 | zinx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 7.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | C# | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-06-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 zinx if
- You want the zinx feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and zinx 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 zinx
Zinx is a lightweight concurrent server framework written in Go, aimed at developers who want a small, readable TCP server skeleton they can study and customise rather than adopt a large opaque application framework.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenRA or zinx more popular?
OpenRA has 17,408 GitHub stars and zinx has 7,765. OpenRA has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenRA and zinx free?
Both are open source. OpenRA is licensed under GPL-3.0 and zinx under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenRA and zinx?
OpenRA is written in C# and zinx 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 zinx?
Choose OpenRA if you want the larger community (17,408 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zinx if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.