head to head · open source
Pumpkin vs agones
Pumpkin has 11,292 GitHub stars, 813 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agones has 7,032 stars, 943 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped today. Pumpkin leads on adoption by 61% (11,292 vs 7,032 stars). Pumpkin is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pumpkin has attracted 7% 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-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
| Pumpkin | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 813 | ⑂ 943 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pumpkin if
- You weight community size — 11K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Pumpkin
Pumpkin is a Minecraft server implementation written entirely in Rust that aims to let anyone host fast and efficient Java and Bedrock Edition servers, and it is built for server operators and plugin developers who want vanilla compatible gameplay without the official Java server.
read the full Pumpkin 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 Pumpkin or agones more popular?
Pumpkin has 11,292 GitHub stars and agones has 7,032. Pumpkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pumpkin and agones free?
Both are open source. Pumpkin is licensed under GPL-3.0 and agones under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pumpkin and agones?
Pumpkin is written in Rust 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, Pumpkin or agones?
Choose Pumpkin if you want the larger community (11,292 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.