head to head · open source
OpenViking vs md-to-pdf
OpenViking has 41,383 GitHub stars, 3,362 forks, 999 open issues and last shipped yesterday. md-to-pdf has 1,984 stars, 166 forks, 47 open issues and last shipped 11 months ago. OpenViking leads on adoption by 1,986% (41,383 vs 1,984 stars). OpenViking is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; md-to-pdf is written in TypeScript under MIT. OpenViking has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, md-to-pdf 8%. OpenViking was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| OpenViking | md-to-pdf | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-12-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 166 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenViking if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick md-to-pdf if
- You want the md-to-pdf feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and md-to-pdf fits your workflow better
About OpenViking
The Context Database for AI Agents English / 中文 / 日本語 Website · Live Demo · GitHub · Issues · Docs · Blog Lark · WeChat · Discord · X What is OpenViking OpenViking is an open source context database for AI agents — one filesystem for everything an agent knows: knowledge, memory, and skills. Most agent memory is a black box: text goes in, embeddings come out, and nobody can see what was actually stored. OpenViking organizes context as a virtual filesystem under viking:// instead. Agents navigate it like files — ls , tree , read , write , grep — and you can open any directory to inspect and edit what your agent…
read the full OpenViking overview →
About md-to-pdf
Markdown to PDF A simple and hackable CLI tool for converting markdown to pdf . It uses Marked to convert markdown to html and Puppeteer (headless Chromium) to further convert the html to pdf . It also uses highlight.js for code highlighting. The whole source code of this tool is only \ 250 lines of JS 500 lines of Typescript and 100 lines of CSS, so it is easy to clone and customize. Highlights: Concurrently convert multiple Markdown files Watch mode Use your own or remote stylesheets/scripts Front matter for configuration Headers and Footers Page Breaks Syntax highlighting in code blocks Extend the options of…
read the full md-to-pdf overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenViking or md-to-pdf more popular?
OpenViking has 41,383 GitHub stars and md-to-pdf has 1,984. OpenViking has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenViking and md-to-pdf free?
Both are open source. OpenViking is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and md-to-pdf under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenViking and md-to-pdf?
OpenViking is written in Python and md-to-pdf 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, OpenViking or md-to-pdf?
Choose OpenViking if you want the larger community (41,383 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose md-to-pdf if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.