head to head · open source
glance vs haven
glance has 37,955 GitHub stars, 1,506 forks, 318 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. haven has 812 stars, 50 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. glance leads on adoption by 4,574% (37,955 vs 812 stars). glance is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; haven is written in Ruby under MIT. glance has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, haven 6%. glance was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (self-hosted), 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
| glance | haven | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 812 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-10-20 | 2026-10-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 50 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick glance if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick haven if
- You want the haven feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and haven fits your workflow better
About glance
Glance Install • Configuration • Discord • Sponsor Community widgets • Preconfigured pages • Themes A lightweight, highly customizable dashboard that displays your feeds in a beautiful, streamlined interface Features Various widgets RSS feeds Subreddit posts Hacker News posts Weather forecasts YouTube channel uploads Twitch channels Market prices Docker containers status Server stats Custom widgets and many more... Fast and lightweight Low memory usage Few dependencies Minimal vanilla JS Single Configuration Configuration is done through YAML files, to learn more about how the layout works, how to add more pages…
read the full glance overview →
About haven
Haven Haven is a private blog application built with Ruby on Rails. Write what you want, create accounts for people you want to share with, keep up with each other using built in RSS. Try out a live demo at The following are some motivating philosophies: Open source. MIT License Privacy first. This is for sharing with friends and family, not commercial endevors. If you want a blog for your company, you probably want to use WordPress or Ghost instead. Easy to use. Built in web interface for managing users, customizing the blog, and writing/editing posts with markdown and live preview. Low bandwidth friendly…
read the full haven overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is glance or haven more popular?
glance has 37,955 GitHub stars and haven has 812. glance has the larger community by that measure.
Are glance and haven free?
Both are open source. glance is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and haven under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between glance and haven?
glance is written in Go and haven in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, glance or haven?
Choose glance if you want the larger community (37,955 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose haven if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.