head to head · open source
Audacity vs chafa
Audacity has 18,582 GitHub stars, 2,674 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. chafa has 5,284 stars, 118 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Audacity leads on adoption by 252% (18,582 vs 5,284 stars). Audacity is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; chafa is written in C under LGPL-3.0. Audacity has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, chafa 2%. chafa 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
| Audacity | chafa | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 5.3K |
| License | Custom / other | LGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-25 | 2026-09-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 118 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Audacity if
- You weight community size — 19K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chafa if
- You want the chafa feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and chafa fits your workflow better
About Audacity
Audacity is an open source audio editor and recorder written in C++ and distributed under free software terms. It lives in the open source desktop audio editing ecosystem, where it provides a multi track interface for recording and editing audio on Windows, macOS, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems. The README describes the project as an easy to use audio tool, and the repository contains both the Audacity 3.x line and the in progress Audacity 4 line.
read the full Audacity overview →
About chafa
Chafa is a command line utility and C library that converts image data, including animated GIFs, into ANSI/Unicode character art or terminal graphics formats, and it is for anyone who wants to view images inside a terminal.
read the full chafa overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Audacity or chafa more popular?
Audacity has 18,582 GitHub stars and chafa has 5,284. Audacity has the larger community by that measure.
Are Audacity and chafa free?
Both are open source. Audacity has no licence declared in this registry, and chafa is licensed under LGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Audacity and chafa?
Audacity is written in C++ and chafa in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Audacity or chafa?
Choose Audacity if you want the larger community (18,582 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose chafa if its feature set, stack or LGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.