head to head · open source
Mermaid vs rill
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars, 9,444 forks, 1,781 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rill has 2,979 stars, 206 forks, 211 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Mermaid leads on adoption by 2,954% (90,981 vs 2,979 stars). Mermaid is written in TypeScript under MIT; rill is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Mermaid has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, rill 7%. rill 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Mermaid | rill | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 3.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 206 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Mermaid if
- You weight community size — 91K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rill if
- You want the rill 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 rill fits your workflow better
About Mermaid
Mermaid Generate diagrams from Markdown like text. Live Editor! 📖 Documentation 🚀 Getting Started 🌐 CDN 🙌 Join Us 简体中文 Try Live Editor previews of future releases: Develop Next :trophy: Mermaid was nominated and won the JS Open Source Awards (2019) in the category "The most exciting use of technology"!!! Thanks to all involved, people committing pull requests, people answering questions! 🙏 Table of content Expand contents About Examples Release Related projects Contributors Security and safe diagrams Reporting vulnerabilities Appreciation About Mermaid is a JavaScript based diagramming and charting tool…
read the full Mermaid overview →
About rill
Agent first, human friendly business intelligence Docs · Data Talks Rill is the fastest BI tool for humans and agents, powered by OLAP engines like ClickHouse and DuckDB. Get Started Scaffold a project with agent context Use rill init to scaffold a project interactively: Why Rill? Build with agents — BI as code (YAML + SQL) means coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor can author projects, dashboards, and security policies end to end Semantic layer — Single source of truth for dimensions, measures, and time grains — defined in YAML, generating SQL at query time against your OLAP engine Explore with agents —…
More in Data & Analytics
Related comparisons
More Business Intelligence & Reporting projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Business Intelligence & Reporting field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Mermaid or rill more popular?
Mermaid has 90,981 GitHub stars and rill has 2,979. Mermaid has the larger community by that measure.
Are Mermaid and rill free?
Both are open source. Mermaid is licensed under MIT and rill under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Mermaid and rill?
Mermaid is written in TypeScript and rill 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, Mermaid or rill?
Choose Mermaid if you want the larger community (90,981 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rill if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.