head to head · open source
manim vs kurtosis
manim has 96,143 GitHub stars, 7,896 forks, 500 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. kurtosis has 558 stars, 100 forks, 313 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. manim leads on adoption by 17,130% (96,143 vs 558 stars). manim is written in Python under MIT; kurtosis is written in Go under Apache-2.0. manim has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, kurtosis 18%. kurtosis 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 | kurtosis | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 96K | ★ 558 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.9K | ⑂ 100 |
| 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 kurtosis if
- You want the kurtosis feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and kurtosis 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 kurtosis
What is Kurtosis? ================= Have you ever tried to build on top of a colleague's work, or contribute to an open source project, just to get stuck on the first steps of spinning up a stack to play with? Kurtosis handles the complexity of spinning up ephemeral dev or test stacks so you can focus on developing, not configuring. Kurtosis is formed of: A packaging system for distributing backend stack definitions, which can run on docker or on kubernetes A runtime with a per stack file management system for reproducibly initializing the state of your stack A set of tools to enable devs to interact with their…
read the full kurtosis overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is manim or kurtosis more popular?
manim has 96,143 GitHub stars and kurtosis has 558. manim has the larger community by that measure.
Are manim and kurtosis free?
Both are open source. manim is licensed under MIT and kurtosis under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between manim and kurtosis?
manim is written in Python and kurtosis in Go. 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 kurtosis?
Choose manim if you want the larger community (96,143 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kurtosis if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.