RepoTrending vs GitHub Trending.
Two lists of repos that are gaining stars. Here is what ours counts, what we do not know about the other, and one day read on both.
What RepoTrending counts
One thing: stars gained. We save every tracked repo's star count once a day and subtract. Nothing else goes into the rank: not forks, commits, pageviews or mentions, and not who pays us. Ties go to the bigger repo.
gained = stars_in_latest_snapshot - stars_in_snapshot_24_hours_before
# net of unstars, so it can be lower than "new stars"
You can redo any row: open the repo on GitHub on two days and subtract. How we rank has the whole method and a worked example.
What "Today" means here
Today is the 24 hours between two of our snapshots, not a calendar day. We take one snapshot a day, around 00:30 UTC. On Oct 25, 2026 the two were taken at 00:29 UTC on Oct 24 and 00:39 UTC on Oct 25: 24 hours and 10 minutes apart. This week and This month work the same way over 7 and 30 days. GitHub's page says "stars today" and does not say which hours it covers.
Which repos are in
Repos with 5,000 stars or more, found with public GitHub searches, minus forks and archived repos. A repo under 5,000 stars is not in these rankings, however fast it grows. That is the biggest difference we can name: on Oct 25, 2026 GitHub's daily page showed two repos under that line, makecindy/cindy (4,293 stars) and aws/agent-toolkit-for-aws (3,219 stars), and we had neither.
One day, read on both
Oct 25, 2026, three repos. These are numbers we read, not an explanation of them.
| Repo | GitHub "stars today" | RepoTrending Today |
|---|---|---|
| cloudflare/security-audit-skillFirst on GitHub's daily page, fourth in our Today list. | 2,264 | +2,432 |
| NVIDIA/OpenShellSecond on GitHub's daily page. | 896 | +692 |
| morluto/reaFirst in our Today list. Second on GitHub's weekly page, read the same day. | not in the ten | +5,572 |
How we read them. GitHub: we opened github.com/trending (daily, and weekly for the last note) by hand on Oct 25, 2026, at about 07:45 UTC, and copied the ten repos and their "stars today"; the "stars today" numbers were the same at a second look. RepoTrending: the gain between our snapshots of Oct 24 00:29 UTC and Oct 25 00:39 UTC. One day and three repos say little about any other day, and we can't tell why a number differs or why a repo is missing from one list.
Which one to use
Use GitHub Trending when you want GitHub's own list, inside GitHub, including repos of any size. Use RepoTrending when you want a ranking you can redo with two dates, with the window and the data day printed, for repos from 5,000 stars, and as a feed you can follow (RSS and Atom). Nothing stops you using both: they are two views, and they do not have to agree.
Longer reads: How does GitHub decide what is trending? ยท GitHub trending alternatives: what each one counts.
What we can't tell you
- What GitHub Trending counts or weighs. GitHub does not publish it, so we say nothing about it.
- Why a number or a repo differs between the two lists.
- Which list is "right". They answer two different questions.
Questions
Is RepoTrending the same as GitHub Trending?
No. Both show repos that gained stars, but they are two different lists. RepoTrending ranks by one number, stars gained between two daily snapshots, and covers repos from 5,000 stars. GitHub does not publish how it chooses and orders its Trending page, so we can't compare the two step by step.
Does RepoTrending copy GitHub Trending?
No. We never read github.com/trending. Every number comes from GitHub's public API, read once a day, and the ranking is a subtraction of two saved star counts.
Why do the numbers differ?
We can't say. On Oct 25, 2026 we read the same repos on both and the numbers were not the same (the table above). We know our own window: the 24 hours between two of our snapshots. GitHub's page does not say which hours its 'stars today' covers.
Can I check a RepoTrending number myself?
Yes. Open the repo on GitHub on two days, 24 hours apart, and subtract. That subtraction is the whole rank. A star removed in between is already counted, because the gain is net.
Why is a small repo that is on GitHub Trending not on RepoTrending?
RepoTrending follows repos with 5,000 stars or more. A repo under that line is not in these rankings, even on a day it gains a lot.