head to head · open source
Pumpkin vs kruise-game
Pumpkin has 11,867 GitHub stars, 861 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kruise-game has 1,079 stars, 173 forks, 47 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Pumpkin leads on adoption by 1,000% (11,867 vs 1,079 stars). Pumpkin is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; kruise-game is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Pumpkin has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, kruise-game 16%. Pumpkin 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 | kruise-game | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-07-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 861 | ⑂ 173 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pumpkin if
- You weight community size — 12K 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 kruise-game if
- You want the kruise-game 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 kruise-game 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 kruise-game
OpenKruiseGame (OKG) is a Kubernetes workload for teams running multiplayer game servers on Kubernetes who need hot updates, per server operations, and game specific networking that built in workloads do not provide.
read the full kruise-game overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pumpkin or kruise-game more popular?
Pumpkin has 11,867 GitHub stars and kruise-game has 1,079. Pumpkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pumpkin and kruise-game free?
Both are open source. Pumpkin is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kruise-game under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pumpkin and kruise-game?
Pumpkin is written in Rust and kruise-game 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 kruise-game?
Choose Pumpkin if you want the larger community (11,867 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kruise-game if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.