head to head · open source
Pumpkin vs pitaya
Pumpkin has 11,317 GitHub stars, 819 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pitaya has 2,829 stars, 545 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Pumpkin leads on adoption by 300% (11,317 vs 2,829 stars). Pumpkin is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; pitaya is written in Go under MIT. Pumpkin has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pitaya 19%. 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 | pitaya | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-21 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 819 | ⑂ 545 |
| 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 pitaya if
- You want the pitaya feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pitaya 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 pitaya
Pitaya is an open source, MIT licensed game server framework written in Go that provides clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and other platforms through a shared C SDK, aimed at teams building distributed multiplayer games and other server side applications.
read the full pitaya overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pumpkin or pitaya more popular?
Pumpkin has 11,317 GitHub stars and pitaya has 2,829. Pumpkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pumpkin and pitaya free?
Both are open source. Pumpkin is licensed under GPL-3.0 and pitaya under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pumpkin and pitaya?
Pumpkin is written in Rust and pitaya 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 pitaya?
Choose Pumpkin if you want the larger community (11,317 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pitaya if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.