Product Insights
Heap vs Recurly
Developer ecosystem comparison across GitHub activity, SDKs, documentation, community, reach and momentum.
Heap (Product Insights) and Recurly both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.
Recurly (rank #317) holds a modest lead over Heap (rank #569) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (44 vs 35). The gap of 9 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.
On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Recurly is clearly ahead of Heap. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Heap is ahead of Recurly. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Recurly is ahead of Heap. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Heap is clearly ahead of Recurly. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Recurly is clearly ahead of Heap.
Heap carries 215 GitHub stars across 65 public repos, with 6 repositories active in the last 90 days and 1 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 Recurly's footprint is roughly 7.3x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.
Heap is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. Recurly 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.
Side-by-side metrics
| Metric | Heap | Recurly |
|---|---|---|
| Ranking | ||
| Overall rank | #569 | #317 |
| Pillars | ||
| Overall | 35 | 44 |
| Code | 35 | 68 |
| Education | 72 | 57 |
| Community | 14 | 34 |
| Reach | 30 | 7 |
| Momentum | 12 | 64 |
| Builder experience | 0 | 0 |
| Signals | ||
| Stars | 215 | 1,564 |
| Forks | 105 | 700 |
| Public repos | 65 | 53 |
| Active repos (90d) | 6 | 26 |
| External contributors | 1 | 5 |
| Avg polish | 37 | 70 |
| Avg AI-readiness | 23 | 37 |