head to head · open source
anime vs Wave
anime has 73,508 GitHub stars, 4,967 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Wave has 2,398 stars, 72 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. anime leads on adoption by 2,965% (73,508 vs 2,398 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; Wave is written in Swift under MIT. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Wave 3%. anime 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 | Wave | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 74K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-08-21 | 2026-03-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 72 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick anime if
- You weight community size — 74K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Wave if
- You want the Wave feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and Wave 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 Wave
Wave is a spring based animation engine for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS that gives Swift developers fluid, interruptible, retargetable animations without external dependencies.
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or Wave more popular?
anime has 73,508 GitHub stars and Wave has 2,398. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and Wave free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and Wave under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and Wave?
anime is written in JavaScript and Wave in Swift. 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 Wave?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (73,508 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Wave if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.