Developer ecosystem comparison
EL
Element
@element-hq
Rank #189
Score 50
SaaS

Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.

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Element vs Perk

Developer ecosystem comparison across GitHub activity, SDKs, documentation, community, reach and momentum.

Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) and Perk (We're fixing business travel.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Element (rank #189) holds a narrow lead over Perk (rank #372) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (50 vs 42). The gap of 8 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 Perk. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Element is slightly ahead of Perk. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Element is ahead of Perk. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Element is ahead of Perk. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Element is ahead of Perk.

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. Perk shows 34 stars across 25 public repos, 5 active in the last 90 days and 6 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Element's footprint is roughly 1017.9x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Element is the stronger read for anyone weighting code quality. Perk makes more sense for teams already using its adjacent tools. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.

Side-by-side metrics

MetricElementPerk
Ranking
Overall rank#189#372
Pillars
Overall5042
Code7444
Education5854
Community5138
Reach5030
Momentum6048
Builder experience00
Signals
Stars34,60834
Forks7,55911
Public repos13725
Active repos (90d)335
External contributors976
Avg polish7533
Avg AI-readiness5038

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