head to head · open source
rea vs Trail-Code
rea has 214,921 GitHub stars, 52,960 forks, 70 open issues and last shipped today. Trail-Code has 9,977 stars, 882 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rea leads on adoption by 2,054% (214,921 vs 9,977 stars). rea is written in TypeScript under MIT; Trail-Code is written in TypeScript under MIT. rea has attracted 25% as many forks as stars, Trail-Code 9%. rea was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 5 topic tags (ai-agents, claude-code, cli, codex), 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 | Trail-Code | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 215K | ★ 10.0K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-14 | 2026-10-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 53K | ⑂ 882 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick rea if
- You weight community size — 215K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Trail-Code if
- You want the Trail-Code feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Trail-Code fits your workflow better
About rea
REA is an open source MCP server and CLI that lets AI coding agents — and your terminal — reverse engineer native binaries, JavaScript and Electron apps, .NET assemblies, and websites, with evidence attached to every conclusion.
About Trail-Code
Trail Code is an MIT licensed TypeScript CLI and MCP server that hands coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and Gemini a graph of your codebase together with a repo committed record of what previous sessions worked out, so teams stop re explaining the same code to the same agent.
read the full Trail-Code overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is rea or Trail-Code more popular?
rea has 214,921 GitHub stars and Trail-Code has 9,977. rea has the larger community by that measure.
Are rea and Trail-Code free?
Both are open source. rea is licensed under MIT and Trail-Code under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between rea and Trail-Code?
rea is written in TypeScript and Trail-Code 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 Trail-Code?
Choose rea if you want the larger community (214,921 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Trail-Code if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.