Two products will take a GitHub contribution graph and turn it into something you can hang on a wall. One of them is ours. This is an honest comparison, written knowing that anyone reading it can see which side we are on, so we have kept to facts you can check on both sites and said plainly where the other product is the better choice.
THE SHORT VERSION
CodePrints prints your GitHub contribution graph as the graph: the familiar grid of green squares, faithfully reproduced, on a poster, a framed poster, a canvas or a mug. If you want the thing you see on your profile, recognisable at a glance to any developer, that is what they make, and they have been making it well for years.
Codex Stellarum takes the same data and redraws it as a vintage star atlas: every day a star, sized by how much you did, arranged on a planisphere or a spiral in the style of a seventeenth-century celestial chart, printed as archival giclée. A developer sees their commits. Everyone else sees a star map.
Same data. Two different objects, for two different walls.
WHO MAKES THEM
CodePrints is made by a small team of engineers at a remote agency called dyve. Their own account of the origin is the one most people in this niche would recognise: they wanted geeky art for their home offices, found everything lacking personality, and decided to bring open source contributions into the physical world. Their customers include David Heinemeier Hansson, who thanked them publicly for a print of five years of Rails contributions. They have the head start, and they earned it.
Codex Stellarum started as a gift for a friend who had just landed her first developer job after teaching herself to code. We ordered a contribution print, liked it, and still wanted something that a non-developer would hang in a living room without needing the grid explained. So we drew her two years of commits as a sky. Her partner walked in and asked where it was going on the wall. That reaction is the product.
WHAT YOU GET
CodePrints offers a poster from 21 by 30 centimetres up to 70 by 100, a framed poster in black, natural or white wood, a canvas, and a mug. Each size is matched to a number of years of history, roughly four to ten, and the result is the grid you already know, printed cleanly.
Codex Stellarum offers an unframed archival print from 30 centimetres square up to 90 centimetres, and A-series portrait and landscape sizes, on 200gsm matte paper, plus a £10 digital download if you want to print it yourself or send it the same day. There are six layouts, four themes, a choice of year range from one year to your whole history, and the option to chart a repository or an organisation instead of a person. There is no framed option, no canvas and no mug. If you want a frame, you buy one; if you want a mug, CodePrints is the answer.
THE DATA
Both read the public GitHub contribution graph. Both are limited by what GitHub exposes: private work appears only if the account has enabled private contributions, and then without detail.
CodePrints lists support for private repositories, GitLab and Bitbucket as coming soon at the time of writing; check their site, since that may have changed. Codex Stellarum reads GitHub only, and shows the full history rather than a fixed number of years.
PRICES
At the time of writing, CodePrints posters run from 25 to 45 euros by size, framed posters and canvases from 49 to 99 euros, and the mug is 19 euros. Codex Stellarum prints start at £25 unframed, the digital download is £10, and team orders start at £19 per print.
Neither is expensive for a made-to-order print. The price difference between the two at a given size is small enough that it should not be the reason you choose.
DELIVERY AND RETURNS
Both are printed to order. CodePrints, like most personalised-print sellers, does not accept returns on personalised items but will put right anything that arrives damaged or wrong. Codex Stellarum ships prints in five to fourteen days, sends digital downloads within minutes, and publishes its refund terms on the site.
CHOOSE CODEPRINTS IF
You want the contribution graph itself on the wall, recognisable to any developer who walks in. You want it framed, on canvas, or on a mug, without sourcing a frame yourself. You want to pay in euros from a European shop with a long track record. Or you are buying for a developer from a developer, where the green squares are a shared language and half the point.
CHOOSE CODEX STELLARUM IF
You want the print to work outside the home office: a living room, a hallway, an office corridor where most people will never have seen a contribution graph. You want the whole history, not a fixed number of years. You want a repository or an organisation charted rather than a person. You are buying for someone whose work you do not fully understand, and you want a gift that says so without needing a glossary. Or you need it today, in which case the digital download exists for exactly that.
WHAT WE THINK
We are glad CodePrints exists. They proved that developers want their work on a wall, and a category with two good answers is better for the developer buying than a category with one. If you have read this far and are still unsure, the test is simple: picture the wall. If it is the wall everyone sees, and the people who see it do not know what GitHub is, come and see your sky. If it is the wall above the desk, and the grid is the point, buy the grid.
See your own history as a star atlas. Enter your GitHub username at codexstellarum.com and preview it free - digital £10, prints from £25.