head to head · open source
NvChad vs pyrefly
NvChad has 28,492 GitHub stars, 2,216 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. pyrefly has 7,017 stars, 521 forks, 694 open issues and last shipped today. NvChad leads on adoption by 306% (28,492 vs 7,017 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; pyrefly is written in Rust under MIT. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, pyrefly 7%. pyrefly 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 | pyrefly | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 7.0K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Lua | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-09-27 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 521 |
| 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 pyrefly if
- You want the pyrefly feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and pyrefly 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 pyrefly
Pyrefly is a fast, MIT licensed type checker and language server for Python, written in Rust and distributed both as a command line tool and as extensions for editors such as VS Code, Neovim and Zed, aimed at Python developers and teams who want type checking and IDE features from a single tool.
read the full pyrefly overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or pyrefly more popular?
NvChad has 28,492 GitHub stars and pyrefly has 7,017. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and pyrefly free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and pyrefly under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and pyrefly?
NvChad is written in Lua and pyrefly 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 pyrefly?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,492 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose pyrefly if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.