head to head · open source
ant-design vs pencil
ant-design has 99,540 GitHub stars, 54,718 forks, 1,066 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pencil has 9,865 stars, 791 forks, 533 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. ant-design leads on adoption by 909% (99,540 vs 9,865 stars). ant-design is written in TypeScript under MIT; pencil is written in JavaScript under GPL-2.0. ant-design has attracted 55% as many forks as stars, pencil 8%. ant-design 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
| ant-design | pencil | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 100K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-06-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 55K | ⑂ 791 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ant-design if
- You weight community size — 100K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick pencil if
- You want the pencil feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and pencil fits your workflow better
About ant-design
Ant Design (antd) is an enterprise class UI design language and React UI library that gives teams a full set of production ready React components, design resources and tooling for building web applications.
read the full ant-design overview →
About pencil
Pencil is a free and open source diagramming and GUI prototyping tool, licensed under GPL 2.0, that lets designers and developers sketch wireframes, mockups, and diagrams on the desktop without a commercial licence.
read the full pencil overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ant-design or pencil more popular?
ant-design has 99,540 GitHub stars and pencil has 9,865. ant-design has the larger community by that measure.
Are ant-design and pencil free?
Both are open source. ant-design is licensed under MIT and pencil under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ant-design and pencil?
ant-design is written in TypeScript and pencil in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ant-design or pencil?
Choose ant-design if you want the larger community (99,540 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pencil if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.