head to head · open source
ponytail vs xberg
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars, 10,094 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. xberg has 9,513 stars, 610 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponytail leads on adoption by 1,821% (182,779 vs 9,513 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; xberg is written in Rust under MIT. ponytail has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, xberg 6%. xberg 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 | xberg | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 183K | ★ 9.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 610 |
| 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 xberg if
- You want the xberg feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and xberg 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 xberg
Xberg The fast, precise document intelligence engine — for every language. Point Xberg at anything — a PDF, a scanned image, a spreadsheet, an audio file, a URL, a whole archive, or a source tree — and get back clean text, tables, metadata, and structured data. One engine handles format detection, reading, OCR, and extraction, so you never stitch a pipeline together from a dozen libraries. 107 formats · 141 file extensions · 371 code languages · 15 language bindings · 6 output formats · OCR · transcription · embeddings The fastest, most precise open source document and PDF to Markdown engine — see the…
read the full xberg overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or xberg more popular?
ponytail has 182,779 GitHub stars and xberg has 9,513. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and xberg free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and xberg under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and xberg?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and xberg 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, ponytail or xberg?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (182,779 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose xberg if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.