Patreon vs Unsplash

Patreon and Unsplash (Building the internet's open library of freely usable visuals. Join us 👫) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Unsplash (rank #338) holds a narrow lead over Patreon (rank #536) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (43 vs 36). 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), Unsplash is slightly ahead of Patreon. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Unsplash is ahead of Patreon. On community (issue response, PR reviews and discussion health), Unsplash is slightly ahead of Patreon. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Patreon is clearly ahead of Unsplash. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Unsplash is clearly ahead of Patreon.

Patreon carries 846 GitHub stars across 62 public repos, with 0 repositories active in the last 90 days and 2 external contributors on record. Unsplash shows 9,930 stars across 63 public repos, 3 active in the last 90 days and 3 external contributors. The star gap on its own does not decide the comparison, but Unsplash's footprint is roughly 11.7x larger, which usually shows up in downstream signals like inbound issues and third party integrations.

Patreon is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. Unsplash 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.