head to head · open source
anime vs designcraft
anime has 73,498 GitHub stars, 4,967 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. designcraft has 2,909 stars, 1,850 forks, 301 open issues and last shipped yesterday. anime leads on adoption by 2,427% (73,498 vs 2,909 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; designcraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, designcraft 64%. designcraft was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | designcraft | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-08-21 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 designcraft if
- You want the designcraft feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and designcraft 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 designcraft
DesignCraft is an open source, clean room reimplementation of Adobe InDesign written in pure Rust, aimed at designers and developers who want professional page layout and publishing without a subscription.
read the full designcraft overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or designcraft more popular?
anime has 73,498 GitHub stars and designcraft has 2,909. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and designcraft free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and designcraft under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and designcraft?
anime is written in JavaScript and designcraft in Rust. 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 designcraft?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (73,498 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose designcraft if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.