head to head · open source
Zen vs Stoat
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars, 143 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Stoat has 3,336 stars, 388 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped today. Zen leads on adoption by 27% (4,225 vs 3,336 stars). Zen is written in Go under MIT; Stoat is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. Zen has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, Stoat 12%. Stoat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Zen | Stoat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.2K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 143 | ⑂ 388 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zen if
- You weight community size — 4.2K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Stoat if
- You want the Stoat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Stoat fits your workflow better
About Zen
Zen is an open source desktop application written in Go for Windows, macOS, and Linux under the MIT license. It operates as a system wide ad blocker and privacy guard, so it applies to traffic from applications on the machine rather than only to browser tabs. It lives in the desktop security and privacy ecosystem, where users want filtering without browser extensions.
About Stoat
Stoat is a Rust backend project that provides the services and libraries powering the Stoat group chat service. The repository is organized around core crates for configuration, database implementation, files, API models, permissions, presence, result types, and a coalesced crate.
read the full Stoat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zen or Stoat more popular?
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars and Stoat has 3,336. Zen has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen and Stoat free?
Both are open source. Zen is licensed under MIT, and Stoat has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Zen and Stoat?
Zen is written in Go and Stoat in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Zen or Stoat?
Choose Zen if you want the larger community (4,225 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Stoat if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.