head to head · open source
cobalt vs faraday
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. faraday has 6,839 stars, 1,089 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 569% (45,722 vs 6,839 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 | ★ 46K | ★ 6.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | Python |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 46K 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
best way to save what you love cobalt.tools 💬 community discord server 🐦 twitter 🦋 bluesky cobalt is a media downloader that doesn't piss you off. it's friendly, efficient, and doesn't have ads, trackers, paywalls or other nonsense. paste the link, get the file, move on. that simple, just how it should be. cobalt monorepo this monorepo includes source code for api, frontend, and related packages: api tree & readme web tree & readme packages tree it also includes documentation in the docs tree: how to run a cobalt instance how to protect a cobalt instance cobalt api instance environment variables cobalt api…
read the full cobalt overview →
About faraday
Open Source Vulnerability Manager Security has two difficult tasks: designing smart ways of getting new information, and keeping track of findings to improve remediation efforts. With Faraday, you may focus on discovering vulnerabilities while we help you with the rest. Just use it in your terminal and get your work organized on the run. Faraday was made to let you take advantage of the available tools in the community in a truly multiuser way. Faraday aggregates and normalizes the data you load, allowing exploring it into different visualizations that are useful to managers and analysts alike. To read about the…
read the full faraday overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or faraday more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and faraday has 6,839. 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 (45,722 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.