head to head · open source
raylib vs agones
raylib has 34,793 GitHub stars, 3,301 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agones has 7,032 stars, 943 forks, 59 open issues and last shipped today. raylib leads on adoption by 395% (34,793 vs 7,032 stars). raylib is written in C under Zlib; agones is written in Go under Apache-2.0. raylib has attracted 9% 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-development), 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
| raylib | agones | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | Zlib | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 943 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick raylib if
- You weight community size — 35K stars and counting
- You want the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches C
- 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 raylib
raylib is an open source, Zlib licensed C programming library for building videogames and graphical applications, aimed at programmers who would rather write code directly than work inside a visual game engine editor.
read the full raylib 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 raylib or agones more popular?
raylib has 34,793 GitHub stars and agones has 7,032. raylib has the larger community by that measure.
Are raylib and agones free?
Both are open source. raylib is licensed under Zlib and agones under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between raylib and agones?
raylib is written in C 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, raylib or agones?
Choose raylib if you want the larger community (34,793 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose agones if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.