head to head · open source
Pumpkin vs pitaya
Pumpkin has 12,856 GitHub stars, 995 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped today. pitaya has 2,846 stars, 549 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. Pumpkin leads on adoption by 352% (12,856 vs 2,846 stars). Pumpkin is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; pitaya is written in Go under MIT. Pumpkin has attracted 8% 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 | ★ 13K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 995 | ⑂ 549 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Pumpkin if
- You weight community size — 13K 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 Pumpkin is a Minecraft server built entirely in Rust, offering a fast, efficient, and customizable experience. It prioritizes performance and player enjoyment while adhering to the core mechanics of the game. Goals Performance : Leveraging multi threading for maximum speed and efficiency. Compatibility : Supports the latest Java & Bedrock Minecraft server version while adhering to Vanilla game mechanics. Security : Prioritizes security by preventing known security exploits. Flexibility : Highly configurable, with the ability to disable unnecessary features. Extensibility : Provides a foundation for…
read the full Pumpkin overview →
About pitaya
pitaya [![Build Status][7]][8] [![Coverage Status][9]][10] [![GoDoc][1]][2] [![Docs][11]][12] [![Go Report Card][3]][4] [![MIT licensed][5]][6] [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: LICENSE [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: Pitaya is an simple, fast and lightweight game server framework with clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and others through the C SDK. It provides a basic development framework for distributed multiplayer games and server side applications. Getting Started Prerequisites Go = 1.16 etcd (optional, used for service discovery) nats (optional, used for sending and receiving rpc)…
read the full pitaya overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Pumpkin or pitaya more popular?
Pumpkin has 12,856 GitHub stars and pitaya has 2,846. 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 (12,856 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pitaya if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.