head to head · open source
Polar vs Transity
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars, 787 forks, 141 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Transity has 653 stars, 18 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. Polar leads on adoption by 1,473% (10,270 vs 653 stars). Polar is written in Python under Apache-2.0; Transity is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Polar has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Transity 3%. Polar 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
| Polar | Transity | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 10K | ★ 653 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 787 | ⑂ 18 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Polar if
- You weight community size — 10K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Transity if
- You want the Transity feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Transity fits your workflow better
About Polar
Polar is an open source billing platform and payment infrastructure project for digital products, SaaS applications, and AI workloads. It is written in Python, licensed under Apache 2.0, and built around FastAPI, Next.js, React, and Turborepo. The project positions itself as a financial layer for software that needs to charge for tokens, agents, compute, subscriptions, and usage based models.
read the full Polar overview →
About Transity
Transity is a command line plain text accounting tool, written in Rust and licensed AGPL 3.0, for people who keep their books in plain text and want to inspect and maintain them from a terminal.
read the full Transity overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Polar or Transity more popular?
Polar has 10,270 GitHub stars and Transity has 653. Polar has the larger community by that measure.
Are Polar and Transity free?
Both are open source. Polar is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Transity under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Polar and Transity?
Polar is written in Python and Transity 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, Polar or Transity?
Choose Polar if you want the larger community (10,270 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Transity if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.