head to head · open source
Neovim vs fresh
Neovim has 103,459 GitHub stars, 7,381 forks, 1,900 open issues and last shipped yesterday. fresh has 9,420 stars, 375 forks, 369 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Neovim leads on adoption by 998% (103,459 vs 9,420 stars). Neovim is written in Vim Script under a custom or non-standard licence; fresh is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. Neovim has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, fresh 4%. Neovim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (text-editor), 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
| Neovim | fresh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 103K | ★ 9.4K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Vim Script | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-07 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.4K | ⑂ 375 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Neovim if
- You weight community size — 103K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Vim Script
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick fresh if
- You want the fresh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and fresh fits your workflow better
About Neovim
Documentation Chat Neovim is a project that seeks to aggressively refactor Vim in order to: Simplify maintenance and encourage contributions Split the work between multiple developers Enable [advanced UIs] without modifications to the core Maximize extensibility See the Introduction wiki page and [Roadmap] for more information. Features Modern GUIs API access from any language including C/C++, C , Clojure, D, Elixir, Go, Haskell, Java/Kotlin, JavaScript/Node.js, Julia, Lisp, Lua, Perl, Python, Racket, Ruby, Rust Embedded, scriptable terminal emulator Asynchronous job control Shared data (shada) among multiple…
read the full Neovim overview →
About fresh
Fresh A modern, full featured terminal text editor, with zero configuration . Familiar keybindings, mouse support, and IDE level features — no learning curve required. Official Website · Documentation · Discord · Contributing Quick Install: curl fsSL sh Fresh brings the intuitive UX of VS Code and Sublime Text to the terminal. Standard keybindings, full mouse support, menus, and a command palette — everything works the way you'd expect, right out of the box. No modes, no memorizing shortcuts. Built for real world performance: Fresh handles multi gigabyte files with negligible memory overhead and delivers…
read the full fresh overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Neovim or fresh more popular?
Neovim has 103,459 GitHub stars and fresh has 9,420. Neovim has the larger community by that measure.
Are Neovim and fresh free?
Both are open source. Neovim has no licence declared in this registry, and fresh is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Neovim and fresh?
Neovim is written in Vim Script and fresh in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Neovim or fresh?
Choose Neovim if you want the larger community (103,459 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose fresh if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.