head to head · open source
rea vs d2
rea has 444,331 GitHub stars, 109,740 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped yesterday. d2 has 25,811 stars, 777 forks, 530 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. rea leads on adoption by 1,621% (444,331 vs 25,811 stars). rea is written in TypeScript under MIT; d2 is written in Go under MPL-2.0. rea has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, d2 3%. rea 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
| rea | d2 | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 444K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-09 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110K | ⑂ 777 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rea if
- You weight community size — 444K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick d2 if
- You want the d2 feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and d2 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 d2
A modern diagram scripting language that turns text to diagrams. Docs Cheat sheet Comparisons Playground Table of Contents What does D2 look like? Quickstart Install D2 as a library Themes Fonts Export file types Language tooling Layout engines Comparison Contributing License Related Official plugins Community plugins Misc FAQ Notable open source projects documenting with D2 What does D2 look like? Open in playground For more examples, see ./docs/examples. Quickstart The most convenient way to use D2 is to just run it as a CLI executable to produce SVGs from .d2 files. A browser window will open with out.svg and…
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Frequently asked questions
Is rea or d2 more popular?
rea has 444,331 GitHub stars and d2 has 25,811. rea has the larger community by that measure.
Are rea and d2 free?
Both are open source. rea is licensed under MIT and d2 under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rea and d2?
rea is written in TypeScript and d2 in Go. 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 d2?
Choose rea if you want the larger community (444,331 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose d2 if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.