head to head · open source
alive-progress vs pretty
alive-progress has 6,323 GitHub stars, 242 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. pretty has 625 stars, 29 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 20 days ago. alive-progress leads on adoption by 912% (6,323 vs 625 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 | ★ 625 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Clojure |
| Last push | 2026-05-24 | 2026-10-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 242 | ⑂ 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 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 pretty
Sometimes, neatness counts If you are trying to puzzle out a stack trace, pick a critical line of text out of a long stream of console output, or compare two streams of binary data, a little bit of formatting can go a long way. That's what org.clj commons/pretty is for. It adds support for pretty output where it counts: Readable output for exceptions General ANSI font and background color support Readable output for binary sequences Or, compare an example from Pedestal's test suite: Or, same thing, but with Pretty enabled: The point is, you can scan down to see things in chronological order; the important parts…
read the full pretty overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is alive-progress or pretty more popular?
alive-progress has 6,323 GitHub stars and pretty has 625. 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 (6,323 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pretty if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.