head to head · open source
NvChad vs icestudio
NvChad has 28,517 GitHub stars, 2,214 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped yesterday. icestudio has 1,943 stars, 286 forks, 23 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. NvChad leads on adoption by 1,368% (28,517 vs 1,943 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; icestudio is written in JavaScript under GPL-2.0. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, icestudio 15%. 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 | icestudio | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 1.9K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-19 | 2026-10-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 286 |
| 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 icestudio if
- You want the icestudio feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and icestudio 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 icestudio
[![Nightly Build][build image]][build url] ![Version (Stable)][version image] ![Version (WIP)][version image wip] [![License][license image]][license url] Digital Design for OpenSource FPGAs made easy: icestudio.io Platforms Linux, MacOSX and Windows Documentation Find all the information on this WIKI PAGE Introduction Icestudio is a design tool focused on newcomers to the FPGA world Step 1 : Draw your circuit Step 2 : Upload it to your favorite OpenSource FPGA board Step 3 : Done! 😀️ To work on Icestudio itself, read CONTRIBUTING.md. Screenshots Hello world examples from the iceK collection Alhambra II board…
read the full icestudio overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or icestudio more popular?
NvChad has 28,517 GitHub stars and icestudio has 1,943. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and icestudio free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and icestudio under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and icestudio?
NvChad is written in Lua and icestudio in JavaScript. 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 icestudio?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,517 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose icestudio if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.