head to head · open source
alive-progress vs pretty
alive-progress has 6,307 GitHub stars, 236 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pretty has 624 stars, 29 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. alive-progress leads on adoption by 911% (6,307 vs 624 stars). alive-progress is written in Python under MIT; pretty is written in Clojure under Apache-2.0. alive-progress has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, pretty 5%. pretty 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 | pretty | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.3K | ★ 624 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-05-24 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 236 | ⑂ 29 |
| 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 pretty if
- You want the pretty feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Clojure
- You evaluated both and pretty fits your workflow better
About alive-progress
alive progress is a Python progress bar library for long running command line processing, aimed at developers who need live throughput, an accurate ETA, and rich terminal animation instead of a static bar.
read the full alive-progress overview →
About pretty
pretty is an Apache 2.0 Clojure library, published on Clojars as org.clj commons/pretty, that formats exception output, ANSI fonts and binary data so developers can read console and REPL output more easily.
read the full pretty overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is alive-progress or pretty more popular?
alive-progress has 6,307 GitHub stars and pretty has 624. alive-progress has the larger community by that measure.
Are alive-progress and pretty free?
Both are open source. alive-progress is licensed under MIT and pretty under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between alive-progress and pretty?
alive-progress is written in Python and pretty in Clojure. 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 pretty?
Choose alive-progress if you want the larger community (6,307 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pretty if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.