head to head · open source
ponytail vs html-video
ponytail has 141,465 GitHub stars, 7,581 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. html-video has 4,587 stars, 564 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. ponytail leads on adoption by 2,984% (141,465 vs 4,587 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; html-video is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, html-video 12%. ponytail 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
| ponytail | html-video | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-06-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 564 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 141K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick html-video if
- You want the html-video feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and html-video fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail is an open source agent skill for JavaScript and LLM based coding tools that makes an AI agent write the minimum working code for a task, and it is built for developers and teams running agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor against real repositories.
read the full ponytail overview →
About html-video
html video is an Apache 2.0 meta layer from the Open Design team that turns HTML, CSS and data into real MP4 files on a local laptop, built for coding agents and the developers who drive them.
read the full html-video overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or html-video more popular?
ponytail has 141,465 GitHub stars and html-video has 4,587. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and html-video free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and html-video under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and html-video?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and html-video in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, ponytail or html-video?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,465 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose html-video if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.