head to head · open source
anime vs webgradients
anime has 73,052 GitHub stars, 4,936 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. webgradients has 2,478 stars, 140 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. anime leads on adoption by 2,848% (73,052 vs 2,478 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; webgradients is written in CSS under MIT. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, webgradients 6%. anime was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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 | webgradients | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | CSS |
| Last push | 2026-08-21 | 2026-08-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 140 |
| 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 webgradients if
- You want the webgradients feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches CSS
- You evaluated both and webgradients 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 webgradients
WebGradients is a curated, MIT licensed collection of 180 ready made gradients distributed as CSS3, Sketch, PSD and Figma assets alongside a machine readable JSON dataset, aimed at frontend developers, designers and AI agent builders who need polished background colour treatments without composing them from scratch.
read the full webgradients overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or webgradients more popular?
anime has 73,052 GitHub stars and webgradients has 2,478. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and webgradients free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and webgradients under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and webgradients?
anime is written in JavaScript and webgradients 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 webgradients?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (73,052 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose webgradients if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.