head to head · open source
anime vs animxyz
anime has 73,475 GitHub stars, 4,967 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. animxyz has 2,498 stars, 62 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. anime leads on adoption by 2,841% (73,475 vs 2,498 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; animxyz is written in CSS under MIT. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, animxyz 2%. animxyz was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (animation, css), 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
| anime | animxyz | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | CSS |
| Last push | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 62 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick anime if
- You weight community size — 73K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick animxyz if
- You want the animxyz feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches CSS
- You evaluated both and animxyz fits your workflow better
About anime
Anime.js is a free, MIT licensed JavaScript animation engine for developers who need to animate CSS properties, SVG, DOM attributes, and plain JavaScript objects from a single lightweight API.
read the full anime overview →
About animxyz
AnimXYZ is a composable CSS animation library for front end developers and designers building sites in Vue, React, SCSS, or plain CSS who want to create custom motion without hand writing keyframes.
read the full animxyz overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or animxyz more popular?
anime has 73,475 GitHub stars and animxyz has 2,498. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and animxyz free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and animxyz under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and animxyz?
anime is written in JavaScript and animxyz in CSS. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, anime or animxyz?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (73,475 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose animxyz if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.