head to head · open source
Darktable vs Krita
Darktable has 13,088 GitHub stars, 1,434 forks, 678 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Krita has 10,385 stars, 856 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Darktable leads on adoption by 26% (13,088 vs 10,385 stars). Darktable is written in C under GPL-3.0; Krita is written in C++ under GPL-3.0. Darktable has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, Krita 8%. 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 | Krita | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 13K | ★ 10K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | C | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 856 |
| 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 Krita if
- You want the Krita feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and Krita 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 Krita
Krita is a free and open source cross platform application for digital painting. It lives in the KDE ecosystem and is built on the KDE and Qt frameworks. The project is licensed under the GNU Public License, Version 3, and the GitHub repository is a mirror of the real code repository at https://invent.kde.org/graphics/krita.git.
read the full Krita overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Darktable or Krita more popular?
Darktable has 13,088 GitHub stars and Krita has 10,385. Darktable has the larger community by that measure.
Are Darktable and Krita free?
Both are open source. Darktable is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Krita under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Darktable and Krita?
Darktable is written in C and Krita in C++. 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 Krita?
Choose Darktable if you want the larger community (13,088 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Krita if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.