head to head · open source
Audacity vs imaginary
Audacity has 18,550 GitHub stars, 2,670 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. imaginary has 6,079 stars, 500 forks, 135 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Audacity leads on adoption by 205% (18,550 vs 6,079 stars). Audacity is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; imaginary is written in Go under MIT. Audacity has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, imaginary 8%. Audacity 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 | imaginary | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 19K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2025-11-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 500 |
| 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 imaginary if
- You want the imaginary feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and imaginary 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 imaginary
imaginary is a fast, Docker ready HTTP microservice written in Go for high level image processing, and it is aimed at developers and platform teams that need to resize, crop, convert and watermark images at scale through one HTTP API instead of embedding an image library in every application.
read the full imaginary overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Audacity or imaginary more popular?
Audacity has 18,550 GitHub stars and imaginary has 6,079. Audacity has the larger community by that measure.
Are Audacity and imaginary free?
Both are open source. Audacity has no licence declared in this registry, and imaginary is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Audacity and imaginary?
Audacity is written in C++ and imaginary in Go. 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 imaginary?
Choose Audacity if you want the larger community (18,550 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose imaginary if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.