head to head · open source
ant-design vs pencil
ant-design has 100,046 GitHub stars, 54,644 forks, 1,066 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pencil has 9,894 stars, 794 forks, 533 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. ant-design leads on adoption by 911% (100,046 vs 9,894 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 | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 55K | ⑂ 794 |
| 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 An enterprise class UI design language and React UI library. [![CI status][github action image]][github action url] [![codecov][codecov image]][codecov url] [![NPM version][npm image]][npm url] [![NPM downloads][download image]][download url] [![][bundlephobia image]][bundlephobia url] [![][jsdelivr image]][jsdelivr url] [![Follow Twitter][twitter image]][twitter url] [![dumi][dumi image]][dumi url] [![FOSSA Status][fossa image]][fossa url] [![Issues need help][help wanted image]][help wanted url] [![LFX Active Contributors][lfx image]][lfx url] Changelog · [Report Bug][github issues url] · [Request…
read the full ant-design overview →
About pencil
About The Next Version ========== Pencil V3 is a rewrite of Pencil that aims to fix major performance and scalability issues of the application. The new version is under heavy development and we are expecting GA builds in June. The following list summarizes important changes in the new version: Pencil V3 uses Electron instead of Mozilla XULRunner as the runtime. We expect that by moving into this Nodejs based environment, the Pencil source code can be much easier for all fellow developers to play with. The fact that Mozilla XULRunner is outdated is also a reason for the movement. A new, zip based file format was…
read the full pencil overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ant-design or pencil more popular?
ant-design has 100,046 GitHub stars and pencil has 9,894. 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 (100,046 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pencil if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.