head to head · open source
anime vs motion
anime has 72,905 GitHub stars, 4,928 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 29 days ago. motion has 33,653 stars, 1,363 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. anime leads on adoption by 117% (72,905 vs 33,653 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; motion is written in TypeScript under MIT. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, motion 4%. motion was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (animation), 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 | motion | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 34K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-21 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 motion if
- You want the motion feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and motion 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 motion
Motion is an open source, MIT licensed animation library for React, JavaScript and Vue that provides a simple API and a hybrid engine for 120fps, GPU accelerated animation.
read the full motion overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or motion more popular?
anime has 72,905 GitHub stars and motion has 33,653. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and motion free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and motion under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and motion?
anime is written in JavaScript and motion in TypeScript. 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 motion?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (72,905 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose motion if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.