head to head · open source
NvChad vs zasper
NvChad has 28,513 GitHub stars, 2,217 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. zasper has 2,354 stars, 79 forks, 2 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. NvChad leads on adoption by 1,111% (28,513 vs 2,354 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; zasper is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, zasper 3%. zasper 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 | zasper | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-10-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 79 |
| 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 zasper if
- You want the zasper feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and zasper 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 zasper
Zasper is a high performance, self hosted IDE for Jupyter notebooks that runs any Jupyter kernel from a single static binary, aimed at data scientists and teams who want JupyterLab's workflow without its resource footprint.
read the full zasper overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or zasper more popular?
NvChad has 28,513 GitHub stars and zasper has 2,354. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and zasper free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and zasper under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and zasper?
NvChad is written in Lua and zasper in TypeScript. 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 zasper?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,513 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose zasper if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.