head to head · open source
Darktable vs filmcraft
Darktable has 13,273 GitHub stars, 1,469 forks, 678 open issues and last shipped today. filmcraft has 12,692 stars, 5,140 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Darktable leads on adoption by 5% (13,273 vs 12,692 stars). Darktable is written in C under GPL-3.0; filmcraft is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Darktable has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, filmcraft 40%. Darktable 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
| Darktable | filmcraft | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 13K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Darktable if
- You weight community size — 13K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick filmcraft if
- You want the filmcraft feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and filmcraft fits your workflow better
About Darktable
Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and non destructive raw developer. It acts as a virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers, and it lives in the open source photography ecosystem as a C project licensed under the GPL 3.0. It manages digital negatives in a database, lets a user view them through a zoomable lighttable, and supports raw development, enhancement, and export to local or remote storage.
read the full Darktable overview →
About filmcraft
FilmCraft is an open source, clean room reimplementation of the Adobe Premiere Pro editing workflow, written in pure Rust, for professional editors who want a native, self owned non linear editor on desktop or in the browser.
read the full filmcraft overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Darktable or filmcraft more popular?
Darktable has 13,273 GitHub stars and filmcraft has 12,692. Darktable has the larger community by that measure.
Are Darktable and filmcraft free?
Both are open source. Darktable is licensed under GPL-3.0 and filmcraft under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Darktable and filmcraft?
Darktable is written in C and filmcraft 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, Darktable or filmcraft?
Choose Darktable if you want the larger community (13,273 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose filmcraft if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.