head to head · open source
zinx vs canary
zinx has 7,757 GitHub stars, 1,261 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. canary has 652 stars, 911 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. zinx leads on adoption by 1,090% (7,757 vs 652 stars). zinx is written in Go under MIT; canary is written in Lua under GPL-2.0. zinx has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, canary 140%. canary was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (game-server), 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
| zinx | canary | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.8K | ★ 652 |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-06-06 | 2026-10-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 911 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick zinx if
- You weight community size — 7.8K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick canary if
- You want the canary feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and canary fits your workflow better
About zinx
Zinx is a lightweight concurrent server framework written in Go, aimed at developers who want a small, readable TCP server skeleton they can study and customise rather than adopt a large opaque application framework.
About canary
Canary is a free, open source MMORPG server emulator for the OpenTibia community, written in C++20 and Lua, intended for server operators and developers who want to run their own Tibia style game world.
read the full canary overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zinx or canary more popular?
zinx has 7,757 GitHub stars and canary has 652. zinx has the larger community by that measure.
Are zinx and canary free?
Both are open source. zinx is licensed under MIT and canary under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zinx and canary?
zinx is written in Go and canary in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, zinx or canary?
Choose zinx if you want the larger community (7,757 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose canary if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.