head to head · open source
manim vs visual-center
manim has 94,045 GitHub stars, 7,724 forks, 500 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. visual-center has 1,450 stars, 40 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 27 days ago. manim leads on adoption by 6,386% (94,045 vs 1,450 stars). manim is written in Python under MIT; visual-center is written in JavaScript under BSD-3-Clause. manim has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, visual-center 3%. manim 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 | visual-center | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 94K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-09 | 2026-08-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.7K | ⑂ 40 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick manim if
- You weight community size — 94K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick visual-center if
- You want the visual-center 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 visual-center fits your workflow better
About manim
Manim is a Python animation engine for precise, programmatic rendering of explanatory mathematics videos, built for educators, mathematicians, and developers who want frame accurate control over every element of a mathematical animation instead of editing on a timeline.
read the full manim overview →
About visual-center
Visual Center is a JavaScript tool, published as an npm package and hosted as a web app at https://javier.xyz/visual center, that finds the visual center of an image or logo so the mark can be placed correctly inside a container, and it is built for designers, brand teams and frontend developers who currently align logos by eye.
read the full visual-center overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is manim or visual-center more popular?
manim has 94,045 GitHub stars and visual-center has 1,450. manim has the larger community by that measure.
Are manim and visual-center free?
Both are open source. manim is licensed under MIT and visual-center under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between manim and visual-center?
manim is written in Python and visual-center 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 visual-center?
Choose manim if you want the larger community (94,045 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose visual-center if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.