head to head · open source
diagram-design vs rill
diagram-design has 64,318 GitHub stars, 4,247 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. rill has 2,979 stars, 206 forks, 211 open issues and last shipped yesterday. diagram-design leads on adoption by 2,059% (64,318 vs 2,979 stars). diagram-design is written in HTML under MIT; rill is written in Go under Apache-2.0. diagram-design has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, rill 7%. rill was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (data-visualization), 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
| diagram-design | rill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 64K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | HTML | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-01 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.2K | ⑂ 206 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick diagram-design if
- You weight community size — 64K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rill if
- You want the rill feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and rill fits your workflow better
About diagram-design
Diagram Design Editorial diagrams your designer won't hate. New in 2.0 — the Loop: flywheels with a shared memory hub. The dashed lines are the write backs. New in 2.3: semantic system patterns and optional accessible motion, while static output stays the default. New in 2.5.10: ten more layout grammars — Sankey, fishbone, Wardley map, kanban, user journey, deployment, dependency graph, UML class, story map, and database schema. 39 editorial diagram types for Claude Code, Codex, Factory Droid, Pi, and Agent Skills compatible hosts. Self contained HTML + SVG. No shadows. No Mermaid slop. Semantic patterns…
read the full diagram-design overview →
About rill
Agent first, human friendly business intelligence Docs · Data Talks Rill is the fastest BI tool for humans and agents, powered by OLAP engines like ClickHouse and DuckDB. Get Started Scaffold a project with agent context Use rill init to scaffold a project interactively: Why Rill? Build with agents — BI as code (YAML + SQL) means coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor can author projects, dashboards, and security policies end to end Semantic layer — Single source of truth for dimensions, measures, and time grains — defined in YAML, generating SQL at query time against your OLAP engine Explore with agents —…
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Frequently asked questions
Is diagram-design or rill more popular?
diagram-design has 64,318 GitHub stars and rill has 2,979. diagram-design has the larger community by that measure.
Are diagram-design and rill free?
Both are open source. diagram-design is licensed under MIT and rill under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between diagram-design and rill?
diagram-design is written in HTML and rill in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, diagram-design or rill?
Choose diagram-design if you want the larger community (64,318 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rill if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.