head to head · open source
Harper vs feathers
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars, 632 forks, 896 open issues and last shipped yesterday. feathers has 15,263 stars, 798 forks, 121 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Harper leads on adoption by 1% (15,469 vs 15,263 stars). Harper is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; feathers is written in TypeScript under MIT. Harper has attracted 4% 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 | ★ 15K | ★ 15K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 632 | ⑂ 798 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Harper if
- You weight community size — 15K 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 is offline, privacy first grammar checker for English. It lives in productivity, browser extension, developer tools, and text editing ecosystem. Project is open source under Apache 2.0. GitHub metadata shows 15373 stars, 627 forks, and 896 open issues. Last push is 2026 09 14. Category is Productivity & Utilities / Browsers & Extensions. It uses Rust for core, WebAssembly for browser loading, language server for editors, JavaScript package for web and Node.js apps. It solves slow, costly, network dependent grammar checking. It replaces Grammarly and LanguageTool as named in README. Grammarly sends writing …
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. 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 Harper or feathers more popular?
Harper has 15,469 GitHub stars and feathers has 15,263. 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 (15,469 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose feathers if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.