head to head · open source
serenity vs Avalonia
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars, 3,488 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Avalonia has 31,747 stars, 2,877 forks, 1,875 open issues and last shipped yesterday. serenity leads on adoption by 7% (33,938 vs 31,747 stars). serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; Avalonia is written in C# under MIT. serenity has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Avalonia 9%. Avalonia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), 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
| serenity | Avalonia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 32K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | C# |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 2.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serenity if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Avalonia if
- You want the Avalonia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You evaluated both and Avalonia fits your workflow better
About serenity
SerenityOS Graphical Unix like operating system for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. FAQ Documentation Build Instructions About SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s \ nix. This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like. You can watch videos of the system being developed on YouTube: Andreas Kling's channel Linus Groh's…
read the full serenity overview →
About Avalonia
📖 About Avalonia is a cross platform UI framework for dotnet, providing a flexible styling system and supporting a wide range of platforms such as Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android and WebAssembly. Avalonia is mature and production ready and is used by companies, including Schneider Electric, Unity, JetBrains and GitHub. Considered by many to be the spiritual successor to WPF, Avalonia UI provides a familiar, modern development experience for XAML developers creating cross platform applications. While Avalonia UI is similar to WPF, it isn't a 1:1 copy, and you'll find plenty of improvements. For those seeking…
read the full Avalonia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is serenity or Avalonia more popular?
serenity has 33,938 GitHub stars and Avalonia has 31,747. serenity has the larger community by that measure.
Are serenity and Avalonia free?
Both are open source. serenity is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and Avalonia under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serenity and Avalonia?
serenity is written in C++ and Avalonia in C#. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, serenity or Avalonia?
Choose serenity if you want the larger community (33,938 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose Avalonia if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.