head to head · open source
Harper vs feathers
Harper has 17,365 GitHub stars, 794 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feathers has 15,256 stars, 802 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Harper leads on adoption by 14% (17,365 vs 15,256 stars). Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; feathers is written in TypeScript under MIT. Harper has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, feathers 5%. Harper was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (nodejs), 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
| Harper | feathers | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 17K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 794 | ⑂ 802 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harper if
- You weight community size — 17K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Harper
Harper Harper is an English grammar checker designed to be just right. I created it after years of dealing with the shortcomings of the competition. Grammarly was too expensive and too overbearing. Its suggestions lacked context, and were often just plain wrong . Not to mention: it's a privacy nightmare. Everything you write with Grammarly is sent to their servers. Their privacy policy claims they don't sell the data, but that doesn't mean they don't use it to train large language models and god knows what else. Not only that, but the round trip time of the network request makes revising your work all the more…
read the full Harper overview →
About feathers
Feathers is a full stack framework for creating web APIs and real time applications with TypeScript or JavaScript. Feathers can interact with any backend technology, supports many databases out of the box and works with any frontend like React, VueJS, Angular, React Native, Android or iOS. Getting started Get started with just three commands: To learn more about Feathers visit the website at feathersjs.com or jump right into the Feathers guides. Contributing To start developing, clone this repository, then run: To run all tests run Individual tests can be run in the module you are working on: License Copyright…
read the full feathers overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Harper or feathers more popular?
Harper has 17,365 GitHub stars and feathers has 15,256. Harper has the larger community by that measure.
Are Harper and feathers free?
Both are open source. Harper is licensed under Apache-2.0 and feathers under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Harper and feathers?
Harper is written in Rust 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, Harper or feathers?
Choose Harper if you want the larger community (17,365 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose feathers if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.