head to head · open source
motion vs lottie-ios
motion has 33,658 GitHub stars, 1,363 forks, 112 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. lottie-ios has 26,881 stars, 3,840 forks, 44 open issues and last shipped yesterday. motion leads on adoption by 25% (33,658 vs 26,881 stars). motion is written in TypeScript under MIT; lottie-ios is written in Swift under Apache-2.0. motion has attracted 4% 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
| motion | lottie-ios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 27K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.4K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick motion if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 motion
Motion is an open source, MIT licensed animation library for React, JavaScript and Vue that provides a simple API and a hybrid engine for 120fps, GPU accelerated animation.
read the full motion overview →
About lottie-ios
Lottie for iOS is an Apache 2.0 Swift library that natively renders After Effects and bodymovin JSON vector animations in realtime on iOS, macOS, tvOS, and visionOS, and it is aimed at Apple platform developers who want to ship designer authored motion without rebuilding it by hand in code.
read the full lottie-ios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is motion or lottie-ios more popular?
motion has 33,658 GitHub stars and lottie-ios has 26,881. motion has the larger community by that measure.
Are motion and lottie-ios free?
Both are open source. motion is licensed under MIT and lottie-ios under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between motion and lottie-ios?
motion is written in TypeScript 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, motion or lottie-ios?
Choose motion if you want the larger community (33,658 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.