head to head · open source
NvChad vs dillinger
NvChad has 28,491 GitHub stars, 2,216 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. dillinger has 8,286 stars, 1,156 forks, 157 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. NvChad leads on adoption by 244% (28,491 vs 8,286 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; dillinger is written in TypeScript under MIT. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, dillinger 14%. NvChad was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ide), 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
| NvChad | dillinger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 8.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-06-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NvChad if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick dillinger if
- You want the dillinger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and dillinger fits your workflow better
About NvChad
NvChad is a Neovim configuration framework written in Lua that provides a base configuration with polished defaults and a beautiful UI, aimed at developers who want a fast, preconfigured editor without assembling a configuration from scratch.
read the full NvChad overview →
About dillinger
Dillinger is a free, MIT licensed, cloud native Markdown editor built on Next.js and the Monaco Editor, intended for developers, bloggers and writers who want focused writing in the browser with the option to sync finished documents to cloud storage they already use.
read the full dillinger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or dillinger more popular?
NvChad has 28,491 GitHub stars and dillinger has 8,286. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and dillinger free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and dillinger under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and dillinger?
NvChad is written in Lua and dillinger 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, NvChad or dillinger?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,491 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose dillinger if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.