head to head · open source
devpod vs lite-xl
devpod has 15,307 GitHub stars, 589 forks, 58 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. lite-xl has 6,506 stars, 328 forks, 330 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. devpod leads on adoption by 135% (15,307 vs 6,506 stars). devpod is written in Go under MPL-2.0; lite-xl is written in Lua under MIT. devpod has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, lite-xl 5%. lite-xl was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| devpod | lite-xl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 15K | ★ 6.5K |
| License | MPL-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Lua |
| Last push | 2025-11-14 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 589 | ⑂ 328 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick devpod if
- You weight community size — 15K stars and counting
- You want the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lite-xl if
- You want the lite-xl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and lite-xl fits your workflow better
About devpod
Website • Quickstart • Documentation • Blog • 𝕏 (Twitter) • Slack We are hiring! Come build the future of remote development environments with us. DevPod is a client only tool to create reproducible developer environments based on a devcontainer.json on any backend. Each developer environment runs in a container and is specified through a devcontainer.json. Through DevPod providers, these environments can be created on any backend, such as the local computer, a Kubernetes cluster, any reachable remote machine, or in a VM in the cloud. You can think of DevPod as the glue that connects your local IDE to a machine…
read the full devpod overview →
About lite-xl
Lite XL [![CI]]( [![Discord Badge Image]]( ![screenshot dark] A lightweight text editor written in Lua, adapted from [lite]. [Get Lite XL] — Download for Windows, Linux and Mac OS. [Get plugins] — Add additional functionality, adapted for Lite XL. [Get color themes] — Add additional colors themes. Please refer to our [website] for the user and developer documentation, including [build] instructions details. A quick build guide is described below. Lite XL has support for high DPI display on Windows and Linux and, since 1.16.7 release, it supports retina displays on macOS. Please note that Lite XL is compatible…
read the full lite-xl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is devpod or lite-xl more popular?
devpod has 15,307 GitHub stars and lite-xl has 6,506. devpod has the larger community by that measure.
Are devpod and lite-xl free?
Both are open source. devpod is licensed under MPL-2.0 and lite-xl under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between devpod and lite-xl?
devpod is written in Go and lite-xl in Lua. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, devpod or lite-xl?
Choose devpod if you want the larger community (15,307 stars) or its MPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose lite-xl if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.