head to head · open source
zinx vs pitaya
zinx has 7,761 GitHub stars, 1,262 forks, 96 open issues and last shipped 15 days ago. pitaya has 2,846 stars, 549 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. zinx leads on adoption by 173% (7,761 vs 2,846 stars). zinx is written in Go under MIT; pitaya is written in Go under MIT. zinx has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, pitaya 19%. pitaya 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| zinx | pitaya | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.8K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-22 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.3K | ⑂ 549 |
| 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 pitaya if
- You want the pitaya feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and pitaya fits your workflow better
About zinx
English 简体中文 Zinx is a lightweight concurrent server framework based on Golang. Document Note : Zinx has been widely used in many enterprises for development purposes, including message forwarding for backend modules, long linked game servers, and message handling plugins for web frameworks. Zinx is positioned as a framework with concise code that allows developers to quickly understand the internal details of the framework and easily customize it based on their own enterprise scenarios. Source of Zinx Website Online Tutorial Online Tutorial Video I. One word that has been said before Why did we create Zinx?…
About pitaya
pitaya [![Build Status][7]][8] [![Coverage Status][9]][10] [![GoDoc][1]][2] [![Docs][11]][12] [![Go Report Card][3]][4] [![MIT licensed][5]][6] [1]: [2]: [3]: [4]: [5]: [6]: LICENSE [7]: [8]: [9]: [10]: [11]: [12]: Pitaya is an simple, fast and lightweight game server framework with clustering support and client libraries for iOS, Android, Unity and others through the C SDK. It provides a basic development framework for distributed multiplayer games and server side applications. Getting Started Prerequisites Go = 1.16 etcd (optional, used for service discovery) nats (optional, used for sending and receiving rpc)…
read the full pitaya overview →
More in Miscellaneous
Related comparisons
More Gaming projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Gaming field.
Frequently asked questions
Is zinx or pitaya more popular?
zinx has 7,761 GitHub stars and pitaya has 2,846. zinx has the larger community by that measure.
Are zinx and pitaya free?
Both are open source. zinx is licensed under MIT and pitaya under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between zinx and pitaya?
zinx is written in Go and pitaya in Go. 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 pitaya?
Choose zinx if you want the larger community (7,761 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pitaya if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.