head to head · open source
Audacity vs libvips
Audacity has 18,479 GitHub stars, 2,667 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. libvips has 11,655 stars, 797 forks, 78 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Audacity leads on adoption by 59% (18,479 vs 11,655 stars). Audacity is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; libvips is written in C under LGPL-2.1. Audacity has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, libvips 7%. 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.
← all 15422 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Audacity | libvips | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 12K |
| License | Custom / other | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | C++ | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 797 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Audacity if
- You weight community size — 18K 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 libvips if
- You want the libvips feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and libvips 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 libvips
libvips is a demand driven, horizontally threaded image processing library in C, licensed LGPL 2.1 or later, for developers who need to resize, convert and analyse large images quickly without exhausting memory.
read the full libvips overview →
More in Miscellaneous
Related comparisons
More Photo & Video Editors projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Photo & Video Editors field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Audacity or libvips more popular?
Audacity has 18,479 GitHub stars and libvips has 11,655. Audacity has the larger community by that measure.
Are Audacity and libvips free?
Both are open source. Audacity has no licence declared in this registry, and libvips is licensed under LGPL-2.1. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Audacity and libvips?
Audacity is written in C++ and libvips 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 libvips?
Choose Audacity if you want the larger community (18,479 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose libvips if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.