head to head · open source
Neovim vs NvChad
Neovim has 103,312 GitHub stars, 7,395 forks, 1,900 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NvChad has 28,529 stars, 2,212 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. Neovim leads on adoption by 262% (103,312 vs 28,529 stars). Neovim is written in Vim Script under a custom or non-standard licence; NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0. Neovim has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, NvChad 8%. Neovim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (lua, neovim, nvim), 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 | NvChad | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 103K | ★ 29K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Vim Script | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.4K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 NvChad if
- You want the NvChad feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and NvChad 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 NvChad
NvChad Home • Install • Contribute • Support • Features Showcase What is it? NvChad is a neovim config written in lua aiming to provide a base configuration with very beautiful UI and blazing fast startuptime (around 0.02 secs 0.07 secs). We tweak UI plugins such as telescope, nvim tree etc well to provide an aesthetic UI experience. Lazy loading is done 93% of the time meaning that plugins will not be loaded by default, they will be loaded only when required also at specific commands, events etc. This lowers the startuptime and it was like 0.07 secs tested on an old pentium machine 1.4ghz + 4gb ram & HDD…
read the full NvChad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Neovim or NvChad more popular?
Neovim has 103,312 GitHub stars and NvChad has 28,529. Neovim has the larger community by that measure.
Are Neovim and NvChad free?
Both are open source. Neovim has no licence declared in this registry, and NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Neovim and NvChad?
Neovim is written in Vim Script and NvChad in Lua. 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 NvChad?
Choose Neovim if you want the larger community (103,312 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose NvChad if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.