head to head · open source
cobalt vs faraday
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. faraday has 6,745 stars, 1,072 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 542% (43,316 vs 6,745 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; faraday is written in Python under GPL-3.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, faraday 16%. faraday was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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
| cobalt | faraday | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 6.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | Python |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick faraday if
- You want the faraday feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and faraday fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About faraday
Faraday is an open source vulnerability management platform that aggregates and normalizes security scanner output into a single multiuser workspace, built for security analysts, AppSec teams, and DevOps engineers who need to track findings through to remediation.
read the full faraday overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or faraday more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and faraday has 6,745. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and faraday free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and faraday under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and faraday?
cobalt is written in Svelte and faraday in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cobalt or faraday?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose faraday if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.