head to head · open source
Audacity vs RawTherapee
Audacity has 18,465 GitHub stars, 2,671 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. RawTherapee has 4,178 stars, 417 forks, 1,028 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Audacity leads on adoption by 342% (18,465 vs 4,178 stars). Audacity is written in C++ under a custom or non-standard licence; RawTherapee is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. Audacity has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, RawTherapee 10%. 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 | RawTherapee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 4.2K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C++ | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.7K | ⑂ 417 |
| 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 RawTherapee if
- You want the RawTherapee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and RawTherapee 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 RawTherapee
RawTherapee is a cross platform raw photo processing program released as libre software under the GNU General Public License Version 3. It is written mostly in C++ with a GTK+ front end, and it reads raw files through a patched version of dcraw combined with an in house solution that adds support for certain camera models dcraw does not handle and improves the accuracy of certain raw files dcraw already supports. The project lives in the open source photography ecosystem, with its documentation hosted on RawPedia and its community discussion taking place in the RawTherapee section of the pixls.us forum.…
read the full RawTherapee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Audacity or RawTherapee more popular?
Audacity has 18,465 GitHub stars and RawTherapee has 4,178. Audacity has the larger community by that measure.
Are Audacity and RawTherapee free?
Both are open source. Audacity has no licence declared in this registry, and RawTherapee is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Audacity and RawTherapee?
Audacity is written in C++ and RawTherapee 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 RawTherapee?
Choose Audacity if you want the larger community (18,465 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose RawTherapee if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.