head to head · open source
manim vs pencil
manim has 96,012 GitHub stars, 7,895 forks, 500 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. pencil has 9,894 stars, 794 forks, 533 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. manim leads on adoption by 870% (96,012 vs 9,894 stars). manim is written in Python under MIT; pencil is written in JavaScript under GPL-2.0. manim has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, pencil 8%. pencil 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 | pencil | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 96K | ★ 9.9K |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-10-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.9K | ⑂ 794 |
| 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 pencil if
- You want the pencil feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and pencil 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 pencil
About The Next Version ========== Pencil V3 is a rewrite of Pencil that aims to fix major performance and scalability issues of the application. The new version is under heavy development and we are expecting GA builds in June. The following list summarizes important changes in the new version: Pencil V3 uses Electron instead of Mozilla XULRunner as the runtime. We expect that by moving into this Nodejs based environment, the Pencil source code can be much easier for all fellow developers to play with. The fact that Mozilla XULRunner is outdated is also a reason for the movement. A new, zip based file format was…
read the full pencil overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is manim or pencil more popular?
manim has 96,012 GitHub stars and pencil has 9,894. manim has the larger community by that measure.
Are manim and pencil free?
Both are open source. manim is licensed under MIT and pencil under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between manim and pencil?
manim is written in Python and pencil 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 pencil?
Choose manim if you want the larger community (96,012 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pencil if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.