head to head · open source
mantis vs crit
mantis has 1,665 GitHub stars, 160 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. crit has 1,101 stars, 88 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mantis leads on adoption by 51% (1,665 vs 1,101 stars). mantis is written in Python under Apache-2.0; crit is written in Go under MIT. mantis has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, crit 8%. crit was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, code-review), 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
| mantis | crit | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.7K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 160 | ⑂ 88 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mantis if
- You weight community size — 1.7K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick crit if
- You want the crit feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and crit fits your workflow better
About mantis
Mantis is a modular, stack agnostic toolkit of security review skills for AI coding agents, and it includes an ADK reference harness for building secure software. It lives in the developer tools, AI coding agent, and application security ecosystem, with topics such as code review, DevSecOps, multi agent systems, and hardware security. The project helps agents autonomously find, reproduce, and patch vulnerabilities while giving humans a structured way to review results.
read the full mantis overview →
About crit
Crit is a local, single binary review interface for agentic coding workflows that lets a developer comment directly on generated plans, code diffs, and frontend elements and send that feedback back to the coding agent.
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Frequently asked questions
Is mantis or crit more popular?
mantis has 1,665 GitHub stars and crit has 1,101. mantis has the larger community by that measure.
Are mantis and crit free?
Both are open source. mantis is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crit under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between mantis and crit?
mantis is written in Python and crit 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, mantis or crit?
Choose mantis if you want the larger community (1,665 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.