head to head · open source
NvChad vs nvimdots
NvChad has 28,510 GitHub stars, 2,217 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. nvimdots has 3,416 stars, 479 forks, 4 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. NvChad leads on adoption by 735% (28,510 vs 3,416 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; nvimdots is written in Lua under BSD-3-Clause. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, nvimdots 14%. nvimdots was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 8 topic tags (dotfiles, ide, neovim-config, neovim-configuration), 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 | nvimdots | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 3.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Lua | Lua |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 479 |
| 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 nvimdots if
- You want the nvimdots feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You evaluated both and nvimdots 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 nvimdots
nvimdots is a complete, modular Neovim configuration written in pure Lua for developers on Linux, macOS, Windows, and NixOS who want a ready to use, IDE like editor setup without assembling plugins themselves.
read the full nvimdots overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or nvimdots more popular?
NvChad has 28,510 GitHub stars and nvimdots has 3,416. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and nvimdots free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and nvimdots under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and nvimdots?
NvChad is written in Lua and nvimdots 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, NvChad or nvimdots?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,510 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose nvimdots if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.