# napari vs PyVista

## Key differences

- PyVista has 1.4× as many GitHub stars as napari (3.9K vs 2.8K).
- PyVista had more development activity over the last 12 months: 928 commits vs 745.
- PyVista is downloaded 13× as often on PyPI (466.3K vs 34.7K per week).
- napari is licensed under BSD-3-Clause; PyVista under MIT.
- PyVista is the older project: its repository was created in 2017, napari's in 2018.

| | napari | PyVista |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Fast, interactive viewer for multi-dimensional images in Python. | 3D plotting and mesh analysis through a streamlined interface for the Visualization Toolkit (VTK) |
| GitHub stars | 2,791 | 3,870 |
| Commits (12 months) | 745 | 928 |
| Contributors | 228 | 218 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Status | Active | Active |
| Install | `pip install napari` | `pip install pyvista` |

Source: https://awesomedataviz.com/compare/napari-vs-pyvista/ · Data updated 2026-11-01 · Content: CC BY 4.0, Awesome Dataviz (https://awesomedataviz.com).