Fastmail vs Starling Bank

Fastmail (Open-source software developed at Fastmail.) and Starling Bank both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Fastmail (rank #430) holds a narrow lead over Starling Bank (rank #625) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (40 vs 33). The gap of 7 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

Fastmail carries 6,316 GitHub stars across 38 public repos, with 12 repositories active in the last 90 days and 2 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 Fastmail's footprint is roughly 32.4x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Fastmail is the stronger read for anyone weighting community. Starling Bank looks better where code quality 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.