Daily Stars Explorer is a free, open-source GitHub tool showing full daily and hourly star history, repo comparisons, and activity trends.
Category
Analytics
Pricing
Free / Open Source, from Free
Verified
Not yet
Last updated
July 18, 2026
Free PlanWeb AppAPIOpen SourceSelf-Hosted
Overview
Daily Stars Explorer is a free, open-source tool built by developer Emanuele Fumagalli (GitHub handle emanuelef) that reconstructs the complete daily, and recently hourly, star history of any public GitHub repository, including projects with more than 40,000 stars where GitHub's own API only exposes recent stargazers.
It is hosted at emanuelef.github.io/daily-stars-explorer, released under the MIT license, and can also be self-hosted via Docker.
Key Features
The tool fetches star history from both ends of a repository's timeline simultaneously to reconstruct accurate daily data even for very large repositories, and adds an hourly 'Stars by Hour' view to pinpoint exactly when growth spikes occurred.
Beyond stars, it tracks commits, forks, issues, pull requests, and contributors, supports side-by-side repository comparisons, surfaces Hacker News/Reddit/YouTube mentions tied to spikes, and offers CSV/JSON export and Prophet-based trend forecasting.
Pricing
Daily Stars Explorer is entirely free to use at its hosted GitHub Pages URL, with no subscription tiers or paid features.
The MIT-licensed source code can also be self-hosted for free via Docker for users who want their own instance or to avoid shared API rate limits.
Key Features
Full daily star history — Reconstructs accurate daily star counts even for repositories with more than 40,000 stars, beyond GitHub API's default limit.
Hourly spike analysis — A 'Stars by Hour' chart pinpoints exactly when growth spikes happened, layered against the cumulative star line.
Repository comparison — Compares two repositories' growth trajectories side by side.
Broader activity tracking — Tracks commits, pull requests, issues, and contributor counts alongside stars for a fuller project health picture.
Spike source attribution — Surfaces mentions from Hacker News, Reddit, YouTube, and GitHub tied to specific growth spikes.
Trend forecasting — Applies Facebook's Prophet library to visualize aggregated trends over raw daily data.
Data export — Exports underlying star and activity data as CSV or JSON for further analysis.
Self-hostable via Docker — Can be run locally or on private infrastructure instead of relying on the hosted instance.
Pros & Cons
Pros
Completely free and open source with no account or payment required.
Overcomes GitHub's 40,000-star API limitation to show true historical growth curves.
Provides deeper insight than star counts alone via activity metrics and spike source attribution.
Can be self-hosted via Docker for privacy or to avoid shared rate limits.
Cons
First-time data fetches for very large repositories can take several minutes.
Maintained by a single developer, so support and update cadence depend on one person's availability.
Limited to public GitHub repository data unless self-hosted with appropriate access tokens.
No official roadmap, SLA, or commercial support since it is a free side project rather than a company.
Pricing
Free Free N/A
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Daily Stars Explorer free?
Yes, it is completely free to use at emanuelef.github.io/daily-stars-explorer, and the MIT-licensed source code can also be self-hosted for free.
How does it show star history beyond GitHub's 40,000-star limit?
It fetches star history from both the start and end of a repository's timeline simultaneously, reconstructing the true daily curve rather than the interpolated line most star-history tools show for very popular repositories.
Who created Daily Stars Explorer?
It was created and is maintained by developer Emanuele Fumagalli (GitHub handle emanuelef) as an open-source project.
Can I compare two repositories?
Yes, the tool includes a comparison feature to view two repositories' star growth trajectories side by side.
Does it track anything besides stars?
Yes, it also tracks commits, pull requests, issues, contributors, and surfaces external mentions from Hacker News, Reddit, and YouTube tied to growth spikes.
Can I self-host Daily Stars Explorer?
Yes, it is packaged for Docker deployment so users can run their own instance instead of using the public GitHub Pages site.