head to head · open source
anime vs lottie-ios
anime has 74,260 GitHub stars, 5,050 forks, 118 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. lottie-ios has 26,926 stars, 3,838 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. anime leads on adoption by 176% (74,260 vs 26,926 stars). anime is written in JavaScript under MIT; lottie-ios is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. anime has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, lottie-ios 14%. anime was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (animation), 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
| anime | lottie-ios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 74K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick anime if
- You weight community size — 74K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick lottie-ios if
- You want the lottie-ios feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and lottie-ios fits your workflow better
About anime
Anime.js Anime.js is a fast, multipurpose and lightweight JavaScript animation library with a simple, yet powerful API. It works with CSS properties, SVG, DOM attributes and JavaScript Objects. Sponsors Anime.js is 100% free and is only made possible with the help of our sponsors. Help the project become sustainable by sponsoring us on GitHub Sponsors . Platinum sponsors Silver sponsors Get featured here by becoming a GitHub Sponsor . Usage Anime.js V4 works by importing ES modules like so: V4 Documentation The full documentation is available here. V3 Migration guide You can find the v3 to v4 migration guide…
read the full anime overview →
About lottie-ios
Lottie for iOS View documentation, FAQ, help, examples, and more at airbnb.io/lottie Lottie is a cross platform library for iOS, macOS, tvOS, visionOS, Android, and Web that natively renders vector based animations and art in realtime with minimal code. Lottie loads and renders animations and vectors exported in the bodymovin JSON format. Bodymovin JSON can be created and exported from After Effects with bodymovin, Sketch with Lottie Sketch Export, and from Haiku. Designers can create and ship beautiful animations without an engineer painstakingly recreating them by hand. Since the animations are backed by JSON…
read the full lottie-ios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is anime or lottie-ios more popular?
anime has 74,260 GitHub stars and lottie-ios has 26,926. anime has the larger community by that measure.
Are anime and lottie-ios free?
Both are open source. anime is licensed under MIT and lottie-ios under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between anime and lottie-ios?
anime is written in JavaScript and lottie-ios in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, anime or lottie-ios?
Choose anime if you want the larger community (74,260 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose lottie-ios if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.