head to head · open source
NvChad vs terax-ai
NvChad has 28,490 GitHub stars, 2,218 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. terax-ai has 9,223 stars, 1,009 forks, 449 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NvChad leads on adoption by 209% (28,490 vs 9,223 stars). NvChad is written in Lua under GPL-3.0; terax-ai is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. NvChad has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, terax-ai 11%. terax-ai 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
| NvChad | terax-ai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 28K | ★ 9.2K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Lua | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-03 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.2K | ⑂ 1.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick NvChad if
- You weight community size — 28K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Lua
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick terax-ai if
- You want the terax-ai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and terax-ai fits your workflow better
About NvChad
NvChad is a Neovim configuration framework written in Lua that provides a base configuration with polished defaults and a beautiful UI, aimed at developers who want a fast, preconfigured editor without assembling a configuration from scratch.
read the full NvChad overview →
About terax-ai
Terax is a lightweight, open source, terminal first AI native development environment (ADE) for developers who want a fast native workspace with agentic AI assistance, built on Tauri 2, Rust, and React 19, and released under the Apache 2.0 licence.
read the full terax-ai overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is NvChad or terax-ai more popular?
NvChad has 28,490 GitHub stars and terax-ai has 9,223. NvChad has the larger community by that measure.
Are NvChad and terax-ai free?
Both are open source. NvChad is licensed under GPL-3.0 and terax-ai under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between NvChad and terax-ai?
NvChad is written in Lua and terax-ai 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, NvChad or terax-ai?
Choose NvChad if you want the larger community (28,490 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose terax-ai if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.