head to head · open source
rea vs tirith
rea has 460,226 GitHub stars, 112,781 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped today. tirith has 2,783 stars, 103 forks, 20 open issues and last shipped today. rea leads on adoption by 16,437% (460,226 vs 2,783 stars). rea is written in TypeScript under MIT; tirith is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. rea has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, tirith 4%. 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 | tirith | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 460K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 113K | ⑂ 103 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rea if
- You weight community size — 460K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick tirith if
- You want the tirith feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and tirith 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 tirith
tirith Your browser would catch this. Your terminal won't. Website Docs SKILL.md Changelog Releases Independent open source project, with hosting supported by the Vercel Open Source Program (Spring 2026 Cohort). Can you spot the difference? You can't. Neither can your terminal. Both і characters are Cyrillic (U+0456), not Latin i . The second URL resolves to an attacker's server. The script executes before you notice. Browsers solved this years ago. Terminals still render Unicode, ANSI escapes, and invisible characters without question. AI agents run shell commands and install packages without inspecting what's…
read the full tirith overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rea or tirith more popular?
rea has 460,226 GitHub stars and tirith has 2,783. rea has the larger community by that measure.
Are rea and tirith free?
Both are open source. rea is licensed under MIT and tirith under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rea and tirith?
rea is written in TypeScript and tirith 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, rea or tirith?
Choose rea if you want the larger community (460,226 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose tirith if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.