head to head · open source
mantis vs crit
mantis has 2,704 GitHub stars, 224 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. crit has 1,268 stars, 106 forks, 22 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. mantis leads on adoption by 113% (2,704 vs 1,268 stars). mantis is written in Python under Apache-2.0; crit is written in Go under MIT. mantis has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, crit 8%. mantis 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 | ★ 2.7K | ★ 1.3K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 224 | ⑂ 106 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick mantis if
- You weight community size — 2.7K 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: Portable Toolkit for Building Secure Software [!CAUTION] USE AT YOUR OWN RISK. BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL. This suite is designed to generate and execute autonomously generated code that may be unstable or perform unexpected actions. USE THIS ONLY IN ISOLATED, RESTRICTED ENVIRONMENTS. Never run this suite on a machine with access to production systems, sensitive data, or internal networks. [!IMPORTANT] RESPONSIBLE USE AI models are non deterministic and can hallucinate findings or generate incorrect patches. All findings must be manually verified by a security expert before being reported. Do not mass file…
read the full mantis overview →
About crit
Crit Review and comment on plans, code diffs, frontend elements and send feedback directly to your agent. Adaptive UI for each type of output For agents, plans and code are all the same it's just text, but for us, humans, reviewing generated plans and reviewing web application are two very different activities. Crit adds a proper interface for each type of output and lets you point at the exact thing that is wrong and leave a comment for the agent to fix: crit plan.md renders a markdown file with proper formatting and review UI crit auto detects git changes and shows syntax highlighted diffs for local review…
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Frequently asked questions
Is mantis or crit more popular?
mantis has 2,704 GitHub stars and crit has 1,268. 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 (2,704 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crit if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.