What is Stride used for?

Stride is a free, open-source, cross-platform C# game engine for creating 2D and 3D games and interactive content. It is a good fit for 2D game development, 3D game development and VR interactive content.

Is Stride open source?

Yes. Stride is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at stride3d/stride and is written mainly in C#.

Yes. Stride is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Can I self-host Stride?

Yes. Stride can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.

What is Stride an alternative to?

Stride is an open-source alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine. Other open-source alternatives to Unity include O3DE, Panda3D and Godot.

Is Stride actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Stride was on 14 October 2026. The project has 7.9k stars on GitHub.

Stride: open-source alternative to Unity, Unreal Engine

About Stride

Stride is a free and open-source cross-platform C# game engine. It is fit for both 2D and 3D games, as well as any other interactive content running on desktop and VR. The engine is MIT-licensed and uses C# 14 and .NET 10 for scripting.

Key features

Next-gen graphics API support
Photorealistic rendering and VR ready
Multi-threaded
C# 14 scripting with .NET 10
Built-in game templates
Full asset creation toolchain

Good fit for

2D game development
3D game development
VR interactive content

Built with: C# tools
Tags: game engine; c#; open source; cross-platform; 2d; 3d

Stride: questions and answers

What is Stride used for?: Stride is a free, open-source, cross-platform C# game engine for creating 2D and 3D games and interactive content. It is a good fit for 2D game development, 3D game development and VR interactive content.
Is Stride open source?: Yes. Stride is open source under the MIT licence. Its source code is on GitHub at stride3d/stride and is written mainly in C#.
Is Stride free?: Yes. Stride is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Stride?: Yes. Stride can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure.
What is Stride an alternative to?: Stride is an open-source alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine. Other open-source alternatives to Unity include O3DE, Panda3D and Godot.
Is Stride actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Stride was on 14 October 2026. The project has 7.9k stars on GitHub.