head to head · open source
rea vs carbon-now-cli
rea has 422,352 GitHub stars, 105,329 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped yesterday. carbon-now-cli has 6,030 stars, 125 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 12 months ago. rea leads on adoption by 6,904% (422,352 vs 6,030 stars). rea is written in TypeScript under MIT; carbon-now-cli is written in TypeScript under MIT. rea has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, carbon-now-cli 2%. rea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cli), 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
| rea | carbon-now-cli | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 422K | ★ 6.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2025-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 105K | ⑂ 125 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rea if
- You weight community size — 422K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick carbon-now-cli if
- You want the carbon-now-cli feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and carbon-now-cli fits your workflow better
About rea
English · 简体中文 · 繁體中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Türkçe · Русский · Tiếng Việt · ไทย · Deutsch · Español · Français · Українська · Polski · Português (Brasil) · العربية · فارسی REA: Reverse Engineer Anything One MCP for reverse engineering across binaries, applications, and runtime behavior. See a feature you like. Understand how it works, down to the binary level. Website · Guides · Showcases Quick start · How REA works · What you can analyze · Showcases · FAQ · Documentation npx rea agents setup Join the Reverse Engineering Community Discord · Q&A · Show and Tell See a feature in an app that you want in your own product?…
About carbon-now-cli
🎨 Beautiful images of your code — from right inside your terminal. Table of Contents Description Features Installation Usage Presets License Examples Description carbon now cli brings the power of Carbon directly to your terminal. ⚡️ Generate beautiful images of your code with a single command. Want to customize everything before generating the image? Run it in interactive mode. 💅 Features 🖼 Downloads the real, high quality image (no DOM screenshots) ✨ Detects file type automatically 🗂 Supports all languages & covers extra ground ⚡️ Interactive mode via interactive 🎒 Presets via preset to save and re use…
read the full carbon-now-cli overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rea or carbon-now-cli more popular?
rea has 422,352 GitHub stars and carbon-now-cli has 6,030. rea has the larger community by that measure.
Are rea and carbon-now-cli free?
Both are open source. rea is licensed under MIT and carbon-now-cli under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rea and carbon-now-cli?
rea is written in TypeScript and carbon-now-cli 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, rea or carbon-now-cli?
Choose rea if you want the larger community (422,352 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose carbon-now-cli if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.