head to head · open source
manim vs lottie-ios
manim has 96,100 GitHub stars, 7,889 forks, 500 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. lottie-ios has 26,926 stars, 3,838 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. manim leads on adoption by 257% (96,100 vs 26,926 stars). manim is written in Python under MIT; lottie-ios is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. manim has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, lottie-ios 14%. lottie-ios 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
| manim | lottie-ios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 96K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-10-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.9K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick manim if
- You weight community size — 96K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 manim
Manim is an engine for precise programmatic animations, designed for creating explanatory math videos. Note, there are two versions of manim. This repository began as a personal project by the author of 3Blue1Brown for the purpose of animating those videos, with video specific code available here. In 2020 a group of developers forked it into what is now the community edition, with a goal of being more stable, better tested, quicker to respond to community contributions, and all around friendlier to get started with. See this page for more details. Installation [!Warning] WARNING: These instructions are for…
read the full manim 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 manim or lottie-ios more popular?
manim has 96,100 GitHub stars and lottie-ios has 26,926. manim has the larger community by that measure.
Are manim and lottie-ios free?
Both are open source. manim is licensed under MIT and lottie-ios under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between manim and lottie-ios?
manim is written in Python 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, manim or lottie-ios?
Choose manim if you want the larger community (96,100 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.