head to head · open source
raylib vs flame
raylib has 34,897 GitHub stars, 3,316 forks, 16 open issues and last shipped yesterday. flame has 10,773 stars, 1,043 forks, 90 open issues and last shipped yesterday. raylib leads on adoption by 224% (34,897 vs 10,773 stars). raylib is written in C under Zlib; flame is written in Dart under MIT. raylib has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, flame 10%. flame was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (game-development, 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.
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Side by side
| raylib | flame | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 35K | ★ 11K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | C | Dart |
| Last push | 2026-09-28 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| 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 flame if
- You want the flame feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You evaluated both and flame 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 flame
Flame is a Flutter based game engine distributed as an MIT licensed Dart package, built for Flutter developers who want to write 2D games in Dart without hand rolling a game loop, component system, and rendering utilities themselves.
read the full flame overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is raylib or flame more popular?
raylib has 34,897 GitHub stars and flame has 10,773. raylib has the larger community by that measure.
Are raylib and flame free?
Both are open source. raylib is licensed under Zlib and flame under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between raylib and flame?
raylib is written in C and flame in Dart. 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 flame?
Choose raylib if you want the larger community (34,897 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose flame if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.