head to head · open source
it-tools vs mex
it-tools has 40,672 GitHub stars, 5,436 forks, 821 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. mex has 1,703 stars, 131 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped yesterday. it-tools leads on adoption by 2,288% (40,672 vs 1,703 stars). it-tools is written in Vue under GPL-3.0; mex is written in TypeScript under MIT. it-tools has attracted 13% 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 1 topic tag (developer-tools), 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
| it-tools | mex | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Vue | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 131 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick it-tools if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- 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 it-tools
it tools be self hostable web collection of small developer and IT utilities — converters, encoders, formatters, generators — built with Vue and TypeScript, shipped as Docker image, aimed at developers, IT people, and homelab owners who want those tools without shipping data to third party sites.
read the full it-tools overview →
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 it-tools or mex more popular?
it-tools has 40,672 GitHub stars and mex has 1,703. it-tools has the larger community by that measure.
Are it-tools and mex free?
Both are open source. it-tools is licensed under GPL-3.0 and mex under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between it-tools and mex?
it-tools is written in Vue 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, it-tools or mex?
Choose it-tools if you want the larger community (40,672 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mex if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.