head to head · open source
NvChad vs metals
NvChad has 28,513 GitHub stars, 2,216 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. metals has 2,333 stars, 445 forks, 282 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NvChad leads on adoption by 1,122% (28,513 vs 2,333 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; metals is written in Scala under Apache-2.0. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, metals 19%. metals was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (hacktoberfest, 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 | metals | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | Scala |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-10-08 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 445 |
| 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 metals if
- You want the metals feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Scala
- You evaluated both and metals 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 metals
Metals is a Scala language server that brings rich IDE features to editors supporting the Language Server Protocol, aimed at Scala developers who want full tooling outside of IntelliJ IDEA.
read the full metals overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or metals more popular?
NvChad has 28,513 GitHub stars and metals has 2,333. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and metals free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and metals under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and metals?
NvChad is written in Lua and metals in Scala. 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 metals?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,513 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose metals if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.