head to head · open source
Buzz vs plots2
Buzz has 36,686 GitHub stars, 4,869 forks, 3,556 open issues and last shipped yesterday. plots2 has 1,026 stars, 1,870 forks, 582 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. Buzz leads on adoption by 3,476% (36,686 vs 1,026 stars). Buzz is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; plots2 is written in Ruby under GPL-3.0. Buzz has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, plots2 182%. Buzz 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
| Buzz | plots2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.9K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Buzz if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick plots2 if
- You want the plots2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and plots2 fits your workflow better
About Buzz
Buzz 🐝 A workspace where humans and agents build together, on a relay you own. Vision · Sovereign · Forge · Agents · Architecture · Releasing · Apache 2.0 People and agents building together in the same room. What is this, really? Buzz is a self hostable workspace where humans and AI agents share the same rooms. A Buzz community is the workspace a user reaches by URL. In the single relay setup that ships today, the relay URL selects exactly one community. A hosted operator can serve many communities behind many domains or subdomains, but the client facing rule stays the same: the URL is authoritative for the…
About plots2
PublicLab.org ====== The content management system for the Public Lab research community, the plots2 web application is a combination of a group research blog what we call "research notes" and a wiki. Read more about the data model here. Begin running (and contributing to) this codebase immediately with GitPod: It showcases a variety of features that help the Public Lab community collaborate on environmental technology, design, documentation, and community organizing. Originally a Drupal site, it was rewritten in 2012 with Ruby on Rails and has since extended but not yet entirely replaced the legacy Drupal data…
read the full plots2 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Buzz or plots2 more popular?
Buzz has 36,686 GitHub stars and plots2 has 1,026. Buzz has the larger community by that measure.
Are Buzz and plots2 free?
Both are open source. Buzz is licensed under Apache-2.0 and plots2 under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Buzz and plots2?
Buzz is written in Rust and plots2 in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Buzz or plots2?
Choose Buzz if you want the larger community (36,686 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose plots2 if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.