Chroma vs Mage

Chroma and Mage (Magical tools for data.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Chroma (rank #209) holds a modest lead over Mage (rank #485) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (49 vs 38). The gap of 11 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Chroma is slightly ahead of Mage. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Chroma is ahead of Mage. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Chroma is slightly ahead of Mage. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Mage is slightly ahead of Chroma.

Chroma carries 30,602 GitHub stars across 29 public repos, with 6 repositories active in the last 90 days and 94 external contributors on record. Mage shows 9,079 stars across 44 public repos, 8 active in the last 90 days and 22 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Chroma's footprint is roughly 3.4x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Chroma is the stronger read for anyone weighting education. Mage looks better where momentum is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.