head to head · open source
zinx vs pinus
zinx has 7,765 GitHub stars, 1,262 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pinus has 1,932 stars, 392 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. zinx leads on adoption by 302% (7,765 vs 1,932 stars). zinx is written in Go under MIT; pinus is written in JavaScript under MIT. zinx has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, pinus 20%. pinus 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 | pinus | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.8K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-06-06 | 2026-07-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 392 |
| 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 pinus if
- You want the pinus feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and pinus 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 pinus
Pinus is a fast, scalable, distributed game server framework for Node.js, written in TypeScript and intended for developers building multiplayer games and real time applications such as chat and message push.
read the full pinus overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is zinx or pinus more popular?
zinx has 7,765 GitHub stars and pinus has 1,932. zinx has the larger community by that measure.
Are zinx and pinus free?
Both are open source. zinx is licensed under MIT and pinus under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zinx and pinus?
zinx is written in Go and pinus in JavaScript. 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 pinus?
Choose zinx if you want the larger community (7,765 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pinus if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.