head to head · open source
Pumpkin vs zinx
Pumpkin has 11,292 GitHub stars, 813 forks, 452 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zinx has 7,764 stars, 1,262 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Pumpkin leads on adoption by 45% (11,292 vs 7,764 stars). Pumpkin is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; zinx is written in Go under MIT. Pumpkin has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, zinx 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 | zinx | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 11K | ★ 7.8K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-06-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 813 | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 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 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 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 Pumpkin or zinx more popular?
Pumpkin has 11,292 GitHub stars and zinx has 7,764. Pumpkin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Pumpkin and zinx free?
Both are open source. Pumpkin is licensed under GPL-3.0 and zinx under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Pumpkin and zinx?
Pumpkin is written in Rust 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, Pumpkin or zinx?
Choose Pumpkin if you want the larger community (11,292 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zinx if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.