head to head · open source
frigate vs homie-esp8266
frigate has 35,953 GitHub stars, 3,602 forks, 95 open issues and last shipped today. homie-esp8266 has 1,374 stars, 305 forks, 89 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. frigate leads on adoption by 2,517% (35,953 vs 1,374 stars). frigate is written in TypeScript under MIT; homie-esp8266 is written in HTML under MIT. frigate has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, homie-esp8266 22%. frigate was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (home-automation, mqtt), 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
| frigate | homie-esp8266 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-03-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.6K | ⑂ 305 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick frigate if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick homie-esp8266 if
- You want the homie-esp8266 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and homie-esp8266 fits your workflow better
About frigate
Frigate NVR is a complete and local network video recorder built for Home Assistant, with AI object detection. It uses OpenCV and Tensorflow to run realtime object detection locally on IP cameras, so video analysis happens on your own hardware instead of a vendor cloud. Project lives in the Home Assistant home automation ecosystem, with tight integration through a custom component, and it talks over MQTT so other systems can consume its events. Written mainly in TypeScript, MIT licensed, 8 years old, 35,896 stars and 3,596 forks on GitHub.
read the full frigate overview →
About homie-esp8266
Homie for ESP8266 / ESP32 An Arduino for ESP8266 / ESP32 implementation of Homie, an MQTT convention for the IoT. This branch of Homie for ESP8266 implements Homie 3.0.1 and adds support for ESP32. Download The Git repository contains the development version of Homie for ESP8266. Stable releases are available on the releases page. Using with PlatformIO PlatformIO is an open source ecosystem for IoT development with cross platform build system, library manager and full support for Espressif ESP8266 development. It works on the popular host OS: Mac OS X, Windows, Linux 32/64, Linux ARM (like Raspberry Pi, BeagleBon…
read the full homie-esp8266 overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is frigate or homie-esp8266 more popular?
frigate has 35,953 GitHub stars and homie-esp8266 has 1,374. frigate has the larger community by that measure.
Are frigate and homie-esp8266 free?
Both are open source. frigate is licensed under MIT and homie-esp8266 under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between frigate and homie-esp8266?
frigate is written in TypeScript and homie-esp8266 in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, frigate or homie-esp8266?
Choose frigate if you want the larger community (35,953 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose homie-esp8266 if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.