head to head · open source
NvChad vs evil-helix
NvChad has 28,515 GitHub stars, 2,214 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. evil-helix has 1,383 stars, 40 forks, 77 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. NvChad leads on adoption by 1,962% (28,515 vs 1,383 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; evil-helix is written in Rust under MPL-2.0. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, evil-helix 3%. NvChad was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ide, neovim), 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 | evil-helix | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 40 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NvChad if
- You weight community size — 29K 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 evil-helix if
- You want the evil-helix feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and evil-helix fits your workflow better
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 →
About evil-helix
evil helix A soft fork of Helix which introduces Vim keybindings and more. Installation Download a package and extract it in /opt . Additionally, it's recommended to symlink it in /usr/local/bin : Package manager If a package is available for your system's package manager, it's the recommended way to install evil helix. Current state These are the current differences compared to the upstream project: Vim keybindings ( feel free to file an issue if you're missing certain bindings ): Commands: a , c , d , y , x Modifiers: i Motions: w , W , e , E , b , B , 0 , $ Visual line mode: V Adjusted defaults (511060a): The…
read the full evil-helix overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or evil-helix more popular?
NvChad has 28,515 GitHub stars and evil-helix has 1,383. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and evil-helix free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and evil-helix under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and evil-helix?
NvChad is written in Lua and evil-helix 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, NvChad or evil-helix?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,515 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose evil-helix if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.