head to head · open source
serenity vs feathers
serenity has 33,840 GitHub stars, 3,541 forks, 739 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feathers has 15,263 stars, 798 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. serenity leads on adoption by 122% (33,840 vs 15,263 stars). serenity is written in C++ under BSD-2-Clause; feathers is written in TypeScript under MIT. serenity has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, feathers 5%. serenity was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (browser), 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
| serenity | feathers | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 15K |
| License | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | C++ | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.5K | ⑂ 798 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick serenity if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-2-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick feathers if
- You want the feathers feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and feathers fits your workflow better
About serenity
SerenityOS is a graphical Unix like operating system built for 64 bit x86, Arm, and RISC V computers. It is written in C++ and released under the BSD 2 Clause license, and it lives in the open source operating system ecosystem alongside other hobbyist and research kernels. The project describes itself as a love letter to 1990s user interfaces paired with a custom Unix like core, aiming for a marriage between the aesthetic of late 1990s productivity software and the power user accessibility of late 2000s Unix systems.
read the full serenity overview →
About feathers
Feathers is a full stack framework for creating web APIs and real time applications with TypeScript or JavaScript. It lives in the Node.js and npm ecosystem, and it is published as a set of packages, with the core available as @feathersjs/feathers . The project has existed for roughly 15 years and is maintained under the MIT license by its contributors.
read the full feathers overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is serenity or feathers more popular?
serenity has 33,840 GitHub stars and feathers has 15,263. serenity has the larger community by that measure.
Are serenity and feathers free?
Both are open source. serenity is licensed under BSD-2-Clause and feathers under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between serenity and feathers?
serenity is written in C++ and feathers 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, serenity or feathers?
Choose serenity if you want the larger community (33,840 stars) or its BSD-2-Clause licence terms. Choose feathers if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.