head to head · open source
cobalt vs plots2
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars, 4,031 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. plots2 has 1,026 stars, 1,870 forks, 582 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 4,356% (45,722 vs 1,026 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; plots2 is written in Ruby under GPL-3.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, plots2 182%. cobalt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (collaboration, javascript), 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 | plots2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 1.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2025-12-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 1.9K |
| 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 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 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 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 cobalt or plots2 more popular?
cobalt has 45,722 GitHub stars and plots2 has 1,026. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and plots2 free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and plots2 under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and plots2?
cobalt is written in Svelte 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, cobalt or plots2?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (45,722 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose plots2 if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.