head to head · open source
effect vs retina
effect has 16,138 GitHub stars, 752 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped today. retina has 3,173 stars, 304 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. effect leads on adoption by 409% (16,138 vs 3,173 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; retina is written in Go under MIT. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, retina 10%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (observability), 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
| effect | retina | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 752 | ⑂ 304 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick effect if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick retina if
- You want the retina feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and retina fits your workflow better
About effect
Effect is a TypeScript library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications. It lives in the TypeScript and JavaScript ecosystem, distributed as the core effect package alongside a monorepo of integration packages that extend it. The project is MIT licensed, has been developed for roughly seven years, and currently ships Effect V4 as a release candidate, with the main branch holding v4 development and the v3 branch retaining the previous line.
read the full effect overview →
About retina
Retina is a cloud agnostic, open source, eBPF based network observability platform for Kubernetes, built for cluster network administrators, cluster security administrators, and DevOps engineers who need a centralized hub for monitoring application health, network health, and security.
read the full retina overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or retina more popular?
effect has 16,138 GitHub stars and retina has 3,173. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and retina free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and retina under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and retina?
effect is written in TypeScript and retina 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, effect or retina?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (16,138 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose retina if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.