GoCardless vs Recurly

GoCardless and Recurly both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Recurly (rank #317) holds a narrow lead over GoCardless (rank #372) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (44 vs 42). The gap of 2 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

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

GoCardless carries 6,977 GitHub stars across 161 public repos, with 19 repositories active in the last 90 days and 3 external contributors on record. Recurly shows 1,564 stars across 53 public repos, 26 active in the last 90 days and 5 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but GoCardless's footprint is roughly 4.5x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

GoCardless is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. Recurly 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.