Open-source game engines: star history compared

Godot is the open-source success story of game development — years of patient growth, then a series of sharp accelerations every time a commercial engine gave developers a reason to look around. Bevy shows Rust's pull extending into games with an unusually steep curve for an engine still pre-1.0, while libGDX, Defold and O3DE each hold distinct niches. Engine choice is a decade-long commitment; growth trajectories are fair evidence.

Ranked by current GitHub stars · growth = stars gained in the trailing 90 days · data updated Jul 2026

Open-source game engines — star history

FromTo

godotengine/godot
bevyengine/bevy
libgdx/libgdx
o3de/o3de
defold/defold

Ranking

5 repositories

#	Repository	Stars	+90d	First star	Health
1	godotengine/godot	114,897	~260	2014	debt charts
2	bevyengine/bevy	47,429	~193	2020	debt charts
3	libgdx/libgdx	25,261	~33	2012	debt charts
4	o3de/o3de	9,551	~44	2021	debt charts
5	defold/defold	6,216	~31	2020	debt charts

Decision matrix

Repository health compared

Live Postgres analysis · unavailable data stays labeled

Popularity is only one axis. Compare technical scale, maintenance cadence, ownership resilience, and change pressure using the same completed repository analysis behind each report.

:: Reach

Popularity and real-world adoption

Signal	godotengine/godot	bevyengine/bevy	libgdx/libgdx	o3de/o3de	defold/defold
GitHub starsCurrent public GitHub metadata total.	◆114,897	47,429	25,261	9,551	6,216
Stars gained · trailing 90dChange in the newest 90 days covered by each cached series.	◆+260	+193	+33	+44	+31
ForksCurrent public GitHub metadata total.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Largest package audienceLargest resolved registry total; sources are shown explicitly.	No resolved package	No resolved package	No resolved package	No resolved package	No resolved package
Repository ageElapsed years since the GitHub creation timestamp.	13 years	6.5 years	14 years	5.3 years	14 years

:: Codebase

Size and technical center of gravity

Signal	godotengine/godot	bevyengine/bevy	libgdx/libgdx	o3de/o3de	defold/defold
Dominant languageLargest share of analyzed code lines at current HEAD.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Code linesAnalyzed source lines at current HEAD, excluding blanks and comments.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Languages representedLanguages with non-zero files or line counts.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available

:: Maintenance

Commit volume and recent operating cadence

Signal	godotengine/godot	bevyengine/bevy	libgdx/libgdx	o3de/o3de	defold/defold
Repository commitsFull repository commit total reported by the analysis.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Commits · trailing 90dCommit count in the newest 90 days covered by the repository analysis.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available

:: Ownership

How broadly maintenance responsibility is distributed

Signal	godotengine/godot	bevyengine/bevy	libgdx/libgdx	o3de/o3de	defold/defold
Bus factorFewest analyzed contributors carrying at least half the commits.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Top contributor concentrationShare of attributed commits carried by the most active contributor.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available

:: Change signals

Debt markers and fix pressure in frequently changed files

Signal	godotengine/godot	bevyengine/bevy	libgdx/libgdx	o3de/o3de	defold/defold
Fix-labelled share · frequently changed filesFix-labelled commits divided by commits across the analyzed high-frequency file set.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available
Recent TODO/FIXME movementLatest cumulative marker count and its change over the trailing 90 days.	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available	Not available

Head to head

open in the builder

bevy vs godot godot vs libgdx bevy vs libgdx

Frequently asked

Which of these open-source game engines has the most GitHub stars?

godotengine/godot is the most-starred of the open-source game engines gitdebt compares, with 114,897 GitHub stars as of Jul 2026. It earned its first star in 2014.

Which of these open-source game engines is growing the fastest?

godotengine/godot added the most stars over the last 90 days of its cached history — about 260 new stars. 90-day figures are approximate for older repos, whose history is downsampled.

How is this comparison computed?

The table ranks public repository metadata by current total stars. When historical stargazer timestamps are available, gitdebt plots their cumulative series on shared axes and estimates trailing 90-day growth. Repo-health charts come independently from each repository's commit history.

Related categories

all categories

Fastest-growing repos across all of gitdebt