What we list

The health score doesn’t decide whether a project gets in. It decides where it ranks.

It must meet all of these

1. The source is public, in a public GitHub repository. GitLab and Codeberg are coming later.
2. It has a license file. OSI-approved licenses (MIT, Apache-2.0, GPL, AGPL, MPL and so on) are listed as open source. Source-available licenses (BSL, SSPL, FSL, the Elastic License, Commons Clause) are listed and labeled source-available, and they’re hidden when you filter to OSI-approved only. No license means no listing.
3. It’s an application or service, not a building block. Something a person or team would otherwise pay a SaaS vendor for. Libraries, frameworks, SDKs, UI kits, datasets, “awesome” lists, tutorials, dotfiles and boilerplates are out.
4. It credibly replaces at least one named commercial product. The core workflow has to overlap. “Inspired by”, or covering one small feature of the product, doesn’t count. You name the product; an editor confirms it.
5. You can actually run it. It’s self-hostable with documented install steps, or the maintainers offer a managed version. A README that only describes plans doesn’t count.
6. It’s alive. Not archived, a commit to the default branch in the last 12 months, and at least one tagged release or three months of commit history.
7. It’s documented in English. The README explains what it does and how to install it. A translated README is fine.
8. It’s safe. No malware, hidden crypto-mining, credential harvesting or undisclosed telemetry. Nothing whose main purpose is abuse: spam tooling, stalkerware, harassment scrapers or ban-evasion tools.

Judgment calls

• Forks are listed only if they’ve meaningfully diverged, or exist because the upstream changed its license or governance. Rename-only forks are rejected as duplicates.
• Open-core projects are listed if the open part does the core job on its own. They’re labeled open-core, and the editor’s note says which features are paid.
• Small projects are welcome. There’s no star minimum: a 40-star project that meets every rule gets listed and ranks on its health.
• Maintainers and users submit under the same rules.

Why we turn one down

Every rejection carries one reason: no license, not public, a library rather than an app, no commercial equivalent, can’t be run, inactive, undocumented, unsafe, a duplicate, or a low-effort fork.

When a listing comes down

• Archived repository: the page stays up with an “Archived” notice and links to alternatives, and it leaves the rankings.
• No commits in 12 months: hidden from rankings with an “Inactive” notice. It comes back automatically when work resumes.
• License change: relabeled on the next weekly sync and flagged for an editor.
• Security incident or malicious release: removed immediately. An editor decides whether it comes back.

Ready? Submit a project.