Element vs Starling Bank

Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) and Starling Bank both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Element (rank #190) holds a modest lead over Starling Bank (rank #625) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 33). The gap of 17 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Element is clearly ahead of Starling Bank. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Element is slightly ahead of Starling Bank. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Element is clearly ahead of Starling Bank. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Starling Bank is ahead of Element. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Element is ahead of Starling Bank.

Element carries 34,608 GitHub stars across 137 public repos, with 33 repositories active in the last 90 days and 97 external contributors on record. Starling Bank shows 195 stars across 3 public repos, 3 active in the last 90 days and 0 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Element's footprint is roughly 177.5x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Element is the stronger read for anyone weighting community. Starling Bank looks better where reach 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.