head to head · open source
papermill vs WritingTools
papermill has 6,485 GitHub stars, 462 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. WritingTools has 2,455 stars, 159 forks, 79 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. papermill leads on adoption by 164% (6,485 vs 2,455 stars). papermill is written in Python under BSD-3-Clause; WritingTools is written in Swift under GPL-3.0. papermill has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, WritingTools 6%. WritingTools 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
| papermill | WritingTools | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.5K | ★ 2.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-07-06 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 462 | ⑂ 159 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick papermill if
- You weight community size — 6.5K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick WritingTools if
- You want the WritingTools feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and WritingTools fits your workflow better
About papermill
Papermill is a Python tool published under the BSD 3 Clause licence by the nteract project that parameterizes, executes, and analyzes Jupyter notebooks, and it is aimed at teams who need to run the same notebook repeatedly with different inputs inside data pipelines.
read the full papermill overview →
About WritingTools
WritingTools is an open source, system wide writing assistant for Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is inspired by Apple Intelligence Writing Tools and uses cloud based or local large language models to proofread, rewrite, summarize, and transform selected text across applications. The project is written in Swift and released under the GPL 3.0 license. The README states it works in nearly any language.
read the full WritingTools overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is papermill or WritingTools more popular?
papermill has 6,485 GitHub stars and WritingTools has 2,455. papermill has the larger community by that measure.
Are papermill and WritingTools free?
Both are open source. papermill is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and WritingTools under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between papermill and WritingTools?
papermill is written in Python and WritingTools in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, papermill or WritingTools?
Choose papermill if you want the larger community (6,485 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose WritingTools if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.