head to head · open source
ECC vs mex
ECC has 266,273 GitHub stars, 39,794 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. mex has 1,703 stars, 131 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ECC leads on adoption by 15,536% (266,273 vs 1,703 stars). ECC is written in JavaScript under MIT; mex is written in TypeScript under MIT. ECC has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, mex 8%. mex was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (claude-code, developer-tools, llm), 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
| ECC | mex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 266K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-22 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 40K | ⑂ 131 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ECC if
- You weight community size — 266K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mex if
- You want the mex feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mex fits your workflow better
About ECC
ECC is an MIT licensed open source agent harness performance optimization system that gives AI coding agents a coordinated engineering workflow — plan, test, implement, review, verify, remember, improve — for developers working in Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and other harnesses.
About mex
MEX is an MIT licensed, TypeScript based tool that gives engineering teams and their coding agents a shared project memory kept as readable Markdown inside the repository and shared through ordinary Git commits, pushes, and pulls.
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Frequently asked questions
Is ECC or mex more popular?
ECC has 266,273 GitHub stars and mex has 1,703. ECC has the larger community by that measure.
Are ECC and mex free?
Both are open source. ECC is licensed under MIT and mex under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ECC and mex?
ECC is written in JavaScript and mex in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ECC or mex?
Choose ECC if you want the larger community (266,273 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mex if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.