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Add to SafariWhen comparing Starling JS vs Blacksmith 2D, the Slant community recommends Starling JS for most people. In the question“What are the best JavaScript game engines?” Starling JS is ranked 12th while Blacksmith 2D is ranked 14th. The most important reason people chose Starling JS is:
Starling is available for free with code available on [GitHub](https://github.com/Gamua/Starling-Framework).
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Starling is available for free with code available on GitHub.
Pro Lightweight
Starling is just 12k lines of code and doesn't try to do everything - but what it does, as efficient as possible.
Pro Strong community support
Forum is always active with knowledgeable developers and with lot of inside info, and post mortems.
Pro Cache as bitmap
Automatically detects changes and updates bitmap cache. Allows to gain even more performance on heavy scenes and runs smoothly on old devices.
Pro Most valuable when size matters
All engine code is written in ES6, fully GCC typed, allowing to eliminate all dead code from your app.
Pro Advanced scene graph and rendering pipeline
Dirty flag tracks scene changes and avoids unnecessary calculations and context calls. If no changes were made to the scene since last frame, no rendering will be done. Battery efficient.
![[deleted]](https://avatars.slant.co/identicons/50/9a21b212-6573-4827-9b03-c333d534684d)
Pro Good performance
According to the tests on the Github page, the performance is better than in Phaser!
Pro Good and clear source code
The source code is well commented and easy to understand.
Pro Super small build size
Super small build size through dead code elimination. The best for playable ads and Facebook Instant Games.
Cons
Con Early in development
No stable release of JavaScript version of Starling has yet been released.
Con Small community
The project is young, so the community is extremely small.
