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rowan kavanagh
rowan kavanagh

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I built a token-free alternative to github-readme-stats (with mini badges & sparklines)

#webdev #github #opensource #showdev

The problem

Adding stats to your GitHub profile README sounds like a two-minute job, and then it isn't. The usual snags:

  • You need to generate a personal access token and wire it up.
  • The popular hosted instances get rate-limited, so the advice becomes "just deploy your own" — now you're maintaining a fork on Vercel.
  • Your card shows stale numbers for hours because of aggressive caching.

I wanted something where you paste one line and it just works — no token on your side, no deployment, no config. So I built GitHub Profile Stats (open source, MIT).

What it does

It's the familiar stat card — but with a few things the original ecosystem makes you assemble from separate projects:

Stat cards with 13 metrics and 12 themes:

[![](https://ghstats.dev/api/card?username=YOUR_USERNAME&theme=tokyonight)](https://ghstats.dev)
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Language breakdown, bar or stacked:

[![](https://ghstats.dev/api/langs?username=YOUR_USERNAME&theme=dracula&layout=bar)](https://ghstats.dev)
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Mini badges — drop a single stat anywhere (stars, streak, PRs, followers, weekly commits, and more):

[![](https://ghstats.dev/api/mini?username=YOUR_USERNAME&metric=streak&color=f97316)](https://ghstats.dev)
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Activity sparkline — your last 7–90 days as a tiny inline chart:

[![](https://ghstats.dev/api/sparkline?username=YOUR_USERNAME&days=30&width=420)](https://ghstats.dev)
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No token, really?

Right — you don't need one. You point a card at your username and embed it. (Under the hood the service holds the GitHub API token; you never touch it.) That removes the single most annoying step for most people.

A builder instead of URL guesswork

Hand-editing &hide=issues&show_icons=true&border_radius=... is nobody's idea of fun. There's a live builder: toggle which stats show, pick a theme, tweak borders/titles, and copy the finished Markdown or HTML.

Being fair about github-readme-stats

github-readme-stats is a brilliant project — 65k+ stars for good reason, and if you've already got it set up and happy, there's no reason to switch. This isn't a "X is dead" post. I built mine to scratch a specific itch: zero token setup, plus mini badges and sparklines in one place. If that combination is what you're after, give it a try.

Try it

Over to you

Two quick things I'd genuinely love in the comments:

  1. Drop a link to your profile README if you add a card — I want to see what you build.
  2. What stat or card type is still missing from the whole GitHub-stats ecosystem? If it's a good idea, I'll build it.

And if this saved you a token-setup headache, a ⭐ on the repo genuinely helps it reach more people.

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