head to head · open source
raylib vs cherry
raylib has 34,972 GitHub stars, 3,323 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cherry has 818 stars, 142 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. raylib leads on adoption by 4,175% (34,972 vs 818 stars). raylib is written in C under Zlib; cherry is written in Go under MIT. raylib has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cherry 17%. raylib was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (game-engine, gamedev), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| raylib | cherry | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 818 |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | C | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-04 | 2026-08-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 142 |
| 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 cherry if
- You want the cherry feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and cherry 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 cherry
Cherry is a Go game server framework built on the Actor Model for teams building MMO, SLG, and RPG backends that need to scale to millions of players across distributed nodes.
read the full cherry overview →
More in Miscellaneous
Related comparisons
More Gaming projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Gaming field.
Frequently asked questions
Is raylib or cherry more popular?
raylib has 34,972 GitHub stars and cherry has 818. raylib has the larger community by that measure.
Are raylib and cherry free?
Both are open source. raylib is licensed under Zlib and cherry under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between raylib and cherry?
raylib is written in C and cherry 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 cherry?
Choose raylib if you want the larger community (34,972 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose cherry if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.