head to head · open source
effect vs voltagent
effect has 17,476 GitHub stars, 895 forks, 253 open issues and last shipped yesterday. voltagent has 10,917 stars, 1,186 forks, 86 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. effect leads on adoption by 60% (17,476 vs 10,917 stars). effect is written in TypeScript under MIT; voltagent is written in TypeScript under MIT. effect has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, voltagent 11%. effect was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (javascript), 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 | voltagent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 895 | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick effect if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick voltagent if
- You want the voltagent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and voltagent fits your workflow better
About effect
Effect Effect is a library for building robust, maintainable, type safe, and production grade applications in TypeScript. It helps you handle the hard problems at scale: typed errors, dependency injection, structured concurrency, scheduling, tracing, and unified schema validation. Effect V4 is currently a release candidate. The main branch contains v4 development. Install V4 RC Requirements TypeScript 5.9 or newer. TypeScript 7 is recommended for the best performance and compatibility with Effect's TypeScript tooling. Node.js 18 or newer is the general minimum for running Effect on Node.js. Some integration…
read the full effect overview →
About voltagent
AI Agent Engineering Platform English 繁體中文 简体中文 日本語 한국어 Home Page Documentation Examples VoltAgent is an end to end AI Agent Engineering Platform that consists of two main parts: Open Source TypeScript Framework – Memory, RAG, Guardrails, Tools, MCP, Voice, Workflow, and more. VoltOps Console Cloud Self Hosted – Observability, Automation, Deployment, Evals, Guardrails, Prompts, and more. Build agents with full code control and ship them with production ready visibility and operations. Core TypeScript Framework With the open source framework, you can build intelligent agents with memory, tools, and multi step…
read the full voltagent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is effect or voltagent more popular?
effect has 17,476 GitHub stars and voltagent has 10,917. effect has the larger community by that measure.
Are effect and voltagent free?
Both are open source. effect is licensed under MIT and voltagent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between effect and voltagent?
effect is written in TypeScript and voltagent 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, effect or voltagent?
Choose effect if you want the larger community (17,476 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose voltagent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.