head to head · open source
cypress vs vitest
cypress has 51,019 GitHub stars, 3,639 forks, 1,084 open issues and last shipped yesterday. vitest has 17,124 stars, 2,008 forks, 425 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cypress leads on adoption by 198% (51,019 vs 17,124 stars). cypress is written in TypeScript under MIT; vitest is written in TypeScript under MIT. cypress has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, vitest 12%. cypress was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| cypress | vitest | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 51K | ★ 17K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.6K | ⑂ 2.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cypress if
- You weight community size — 51K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick vitest if
- You want the vitest feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and vitest fits your workflow better
About cypress
Cypress is a fast, easy and reliable testing framework for anything that runs in a browser, distributed as an MIT licensed TypeScript project on npm and aimed at front end developers and QA engineers who need to test web applications.
read the full cypress overview →
About vitest
Vitest is a next generation JavaScript and TypeScript testing framework powered by Vite, built for teams already running Vite who want Jest compatible tests without maintaining a second, separate build pipeline.
read the full vitest overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cypress or vitest more popular?
cypress has 51,019 GitHub stars and vitest has 17,124. cypress has the larger community by that measure.
Are cypress and vitest free?
Both are open source. cypress is licensed under MIT and vitest under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cypress and vitest?
cypress is written in TypeScript and vitest 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, cypress or vitest?
Choose cypress if you want the larger community (51,019 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose vitest if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.