head to head · open source
cobalt vs lumen
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. lumen has 1,177 stars, 117 forks, 12 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 3,785% (45,722 vs 1,177 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; lumen is written in Rust under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, lumen 10%. lumen 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 | lumen | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 117 |
| 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 lumen if
- You want the lumen feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and lumen 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 lumen
Lumen A private Lumina server that can be used with IDA Pro 7.2+. lumen.abda.nl runs this server. You can read about the protocol research here. Features Stores function signatures so you (and your team) can quickly identify functions that you found in the past using IDA's built in Lumina features. Backed by PostgreSQL Experimental HTTP API that allows querying the database for comments by file or function hash. Getting Started Docker Method (Recommended) In this method precompiled docker images will be downloaded, All you need is docker compose.yml. 1. Install docker engine and docker compose . 2. If using a…
read the full lumen overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or lumen more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and lumen has 1,177. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and lumen free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and lumen under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and lumen?
cobalt is written in Svelte and lumen in Rust. 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 lumen?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (45,722 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose lumen if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.