Repo Compare › Microcontroller SDKs
Arduino IDE vs ESP-IDF vs PlatformIO
A side-by-side look at how actively Arduino IDE, ESP-IDF and PlatformIO are developed on GitHub — popularity, contributor base, commit activity and how quickly issues and pull requests move.
What the numbers say
- ESP-IDF is the most-starred of the 3, with 19k stars — about 2.0× PlatformIO's 9.5k.
- Over the 52 weeks to the snapshot, ESP-IDF recorded the most commits (8.1k), against 1 for Arduino IDE.
- ESP-IDF has closed or merged the most pull requests in its lifetime: 2.2k.
- Relative to its popularity, PlatformIO carries the lightest open-issue load: 27.6 open issues per 1,000 stars, versus 78.7 for ESP-IDF.
- Arduino IDE had gone 354 days without a push at the time of the snapshot.
Head-to-head
Snapshot taken 30 September 2026.
| Metric | Arduino IDE Dormant | ESP-IDF Active | PlatformIO Active |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stars | 15k | 19k | 9.5k |
| Forks | 7.0k | 8.5k | 908 |
| Contributors | 308 | 1.3k | 111 |
| Commits, last 52 weeks | 1 | 8.1k | 123 |
| Open issues | 635 | 1.5k | 262 |
| Open pull requests | 100 | 198 | 14 |
| Closed / merged PRs | 1.4k | 2.2k | 398 |
| Watchers | 1.1k | 513 | 192 |
| Last push | 11 Oct 2025 | 29 Sep 2026 | 23 Sep 2026 |
| Latest release | 1.8.19 (Dec 2021) | v6.1 (Aug 2026) | v6.2.0 (Sep 2026) |
| Main language | Java | C | Python |
| Licence | Not detected by GitHub | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Created | Sep 2010 | Aug 2016 | May 2014 |
The wide bar is that repository’s share of the largest value in its own row — half the length means half the number. The thin gauge beneath it is the same row rescaled from its smallest value to its largest, which makes a close gap such as 61k against 59k visible; on that gauge the row’s lowest value always sits at zero however big it is, so read it as a spread and never as a quantity. Bars compare repositories with each other and never one metric against another. Colour identifies the repository, matching the dot beside its name. On the two issue rows a longer bar means more open work, which is usually the opposite of better. The highlighted cell is the highest value in a row. “Active / Slowing / Dormant” is a simple heuristic from how recently code was pushed and open issues per star — a starting point, not a verdict. Stars measure popularity, not quality.
Open these in the live comparer →