head to head · open source
manim vs img2css
manim has 96,012 GitHub stars, 7,895 forks, 500 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. img2css has 2,500 stars, 187 forks, 5 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. manim leads on adoption by 3,740% (96,012 vs 2,500 stars). manim is written in Python under MIT; img2css is written in JavaScript under BSD-3-Clause. manim has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, img2css 7%. img2css 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
| manim | img2css | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 96K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.9K | ⑂ 187 |
| 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 img2css if
- You want the img2css feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and img2css 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 img2css
img2css Convert any image to pure CSS. To use it go to Looking for a programmatic way to do this? See I also made a per pixel animation experiment, see How does it work? It has two different outputs, pure css shadow matrix [1] and base64 embedded image [2]. Pure CSS : This output was created by resizing and setting each pixel as a box shadow of a single pixel div, so no img tag or background image is needed. This can result in huge outputs, and the use of this output is not recommended for production unless there is no other option. Base64 : The entire image file is embedded inside the tag using base64, so no…
read the full img2css overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is manim or img2css more popular?
manim has 96,012 GitHub stars and img2css has 2,500. manim has the larger community by that measure.
Are manim and img2css free?
Both are open source. manim is licensed under MIT and img2css under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between manim and img2css?
manim is written in Python and img2css in JavaScript. 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 img2css?
Choose manim if you want the larger community (96,012 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose img2css if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.