head to head · open source
cap vs nightingale
cap has 24,271 GitHub stars, 2,234 forks, 339 open issues and last shipped yesterday. nightingale has 1,527 stars, 117 forks, 13 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cap leads on adoption by 1,489% (24,271 vs 1,527 stars). cap is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; nightingale is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. cap has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, nightingale 8%. cap was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (react, rust), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| cap | nightingale | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 24K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 117 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cap if
- You weight community size — 24K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick nightingale if
- You want the nightingale feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and nightingale fits your workflow better
About cap
Cap Beautiful, shareable screen recordings. Open source, fast, and built for teams that want to own their data. Website Download Docs Pricing Discord Cap is the open source alternative to Loom. It gives you fast screen recording, polished local editing, instant share links, comments, transcripts, analytics, team workspaces, custom domains, custom S3 storage, and full self hosting when you need complete control. Use Cap for product demos, bug reports, onboarding, tutorials, design reviews, engineering walkthroughs, async standups, client updates, and any moment where showing the work is faster than scheduling…
About nightingale
Karaoke from any song in your music library, powered by neural networks. Nightingale scans your music folder, Plex Media Server, Jellyfin server, Navidrome server, or self hosted web library; separates lead vocals from instrumentals using the UVR Karaoke model (or Demucs); transcribes lyrics with word level timestamps via WhisperX; and plays it all back with synchronized highlighting, pitch scoring, key/tempo controls, profiles, and dynamic backgrounds. Ships as a single binary. No manual installation of Python, ffmpeg, or ML models required — everything is downloaded and bootstrapped automatically on first…
read the full nightingale overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cap or nightingale more popular?
cap has 24,271 GitHub stars and nightingale has 1,527. cap has the larger community by that measure.
Are cap and nightingale free?
Both are open source. cap has no licence declared in this registry, and nightingale is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between cap and nightingale?
cap is written in Rust and nightingale in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cap or nightingale?
Choose cap if you want the larger community (24,271 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose nightingale if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.