head to head · open source
ponytail vs maka
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars, 10,094 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. maka has 5,935 stars, 574 forks, 481 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponytail leads on adoption by 2,980% (182,779 vs 5,935 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; maka is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. ponytail has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, maka 10%. maka was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (llm), 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
| ponytail | maka | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 183K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 574 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 183K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick maka if
- You want the maka feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and maka fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail He says nothing. He writes one line. It works. 54% less code (up to 94%) · 20% cheaper · 27% faster · 100% safe Measured on real Claude Code sessions editing a real open source repo (FastAPI + React), against the same agent with no skill. 54% is the mean across 12 feature tasks (Haiku 4.5, n=4); it reaches 94% where an agent over builds (a date picker) and is near zero where the code is already minimal. ponytail keeps every safety guard while a bare "write one liners" prompt drops one. (The earlier single shot benchmark reported 80 94% as a flat figure; against a fair agentic…
read the full ponytail overview →
About maka
Apache Maka (Incubating) Apache Maka (Incubating) is a high performance agent workspace that keeps a complete record of everything it did. Website · Documentation · Download · 中文文档 What Maka is An agent harness exists to finish tasks. We hold it to one measure: how many it completes and at what cost. We publish every run: same model, same official verifier, full per task record. Measured, not claimed. Maka is benchmarked against other harnesses on the same model with the official verifier, and the per task results ship with every report in docs/eval/ . The log is the runtime. Every model message, tool call…
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or maka more popular?
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars and maka has 5,935. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and maka free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and maka under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and maka?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and maka 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, ponytail or maka?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (182,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose maka if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.