JavaScript Rising Stars 2025: AI platform n8n jumps to number 1
The outstanding winner of the new study is n8n, a project for workflow automation using AI. It received over 100,000 GitHub stars in 2025.
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The current study JavaScript Rising Stars 2025 has been released. It measures the popularity of JavaScript projects based on new GitHub stars added within the last year. n8n leads this time by a wide margin as the overall winner, followed by shadcn/ui and react-bits. In the Frontend Frameworks category, React wins, while Motia announces a paradigm shift in backend and full-stack development.
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The enterJS 2026 will take place on June 16 and 17 in Mannheim. The program will revolve around JavaScript and TypeScript, frameworks, tools and libraries, security, UX, and more. Discounted early bird tickets are available until the program starts.
n8n achieves outstanding victory
In last year's study, n8n was still in 5th place, but has now made a significant leap to 1st place, achieving the clearest victory to date with 112,400 new GitHub stars: As the study creators emphasize, no other project has ever received such a high number of stars within a year – and this year marks the 10th edition of JavaScript Rising Stars.
(Image:Â JavaScript Rising Stars)
n8n is used for automating business processes with AI agents, offers a drag-and-drop interface, and enables integration with AI models from various providers. It originates from the Berlin-based startup n8n GmbH, founded in 2019. In October 2025, it was announced that the company had reached a valuation of 2.5 billion US dollars thanks to Nvidia as an investor.
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The second place in the overall ranking goes to shadcn/ui, the winner of the previous two editions: In 2025, this set of UI components written in React received 26,300 new GitHub stars. Third place is also dominated by React: react-bits, a collection of animated components for background effects, text animations, and more, achieved 26,200 new stars. react-bits is a shadcn/ui project and can be obtained from its registry.
In fourth and fifth place are Excalidraw, a virtual whiteboard for sketching diagrams with a hand-drawn look, and the Postgres development platform Supabase as an open-source alternative to Google's proprietary Firebase.
The most popular front- and backend frameworks
React is once again the most popular frontend framework with 11,000 new GitHub stars, dethroning htmx, which took first place in the last edition. It is now far behind in 4th place, behind Ripple and Svelte. Vue.js completes the top 5.
(Image:Â JavaScript Rising Stars)
Among backend and full-stack frameworks, a newcomer emerges as the winner: Motia. With 13,800 new stars in 1st place in this category, Motia represents a paradigm shift, according to the study makers. Where backend engineering traditionally required separate frameworks – for APIs, queues, workflows, and AI agents, for example – Motia now aims to unify the backend in a single framework. The remaining ranks of the most popular backend and full-stack frameworks are taken by Payload, Next.js, Astro, and Hono.
(Image:Â JavaScript Rising Stars)
Data basis: Selected JS projects
The JavaScript Rising Stars study, conducted for the tenth time this year, measures the number of stars JavaScript projects receive on GitHub over the course of a year. However, only projects listed in the curated list Best of JS are included in the evaluation. Currently, 2145 projects are listed there. Interested parties can propose a new project.
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