head to head · open source
alive-progress vs Autolab
alive-progress has 6,323 GitHub stars, 242 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. Autolab has 808 stars, 234 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. alive-progress leads on adoption by 683% (6,323 vs 808 stars). alive-progress is written in Python under MIT; Autolab is written in Ruby under Apache-2.0. alive-progress has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, Autolab 29%. Autolab was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (feedback), 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
| alive-progress | Autolab | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.3K | ★ 808 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-05-24 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 242 | ⑂ 234 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick alive-progress if
- You weight community size — 6.3K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Autolab if
- You want the Autolab feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Autolab fits your workflow better
About alive-progress
alive progress Have you ever wondered where your lengthy processing was at, and when would it finish? Do you usually hit RETURN several times to make sure it didn't crash, or the SSH connection didn't freeze? Have you ever thought it'd be awesome to be able to pause some processing without hassle, return to the Python prompt to manually fix some items, then seamlessly resume it? I did... I've started this new progress bar thinking about all that, behold the alive progress ! 😃 Introducing the newest concept in progress bars for Python! alive progress is in a class of its own, with an array of cool features that…
read the full alive-progress overview →
About Autolab
Autolab is a course management service, initially developed by a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University, that enables instructors to offer autograded programming assignments to their students over the Web. The two key ideas in Autolab are autograding , that is, programs evaluating other programs, and scoreboards . Autolab also provides other services that instructors expect in a course management system, including gradebooks, rosters, handins/handouts, lab writeups, code annotation, manual grading, late penalties, grace days, cheat checking, meetings, partners, and bulk emails. Since 2010, Autolab has…
read the full Autolab overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is alive-progress or Autolab more popular?
alive-progress has 6,323 GitHub stars and Autolab has 808. alive-progress has the larger community by that measure.
Are alive-progress and Autolab free?
Both are open source. alive-progress is licensed under MIT and Autolab under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between alive-progress and Autolab?
alive-progress is written in Python and Autolab in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, alive-progress or Autolab?
Choose alive-progress if you want the larger community (6,323 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Autolab if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.