---
id: communication/manim
about:
  label: Manim
  description: >-
    Open-source Python engine for precise, programmatic animations, begun by
    Grant Sanderson for his 3Blue1Brown math videos and forked in 2020 into a
    community edition.
  tags:
    - animation
    - explanatory video
    - mathematics
    - python
    - open source
tool:
  form: open-source Python library and command-line renderer
  group: Showing
  homepage: 'https://www.manim.community/'
  licence: MIT
  cost: free
open:
  source: open
  data: unknown
  api: 'yes'
  participation: open
  licence: MIT
  note: >-
    Two versions: the community edition (package manim) and Grant Sanderson's
    own ManimGL (package manimgl), each with its own install instructions.
relations:
  - predicate: alternative_to
    target: communication/remotion
    note: 'both make video from code; Manim in Python, Remotion in React'
provenance:
  origin: agent
  sources:
    - title: GitHub - ManimCommunity/manim
      url: 'https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim'
    - title: GitHub - 3b1b/manim
      url: 'https://github.com/3b1b/manim'
    - title: >-
        Installation FAQ: why are there different versions of Manim? (Manim
        Community docs)
      url: 'https://docs.manim.community/en/stable/faq/installation.html'
    - title: ManimCommunity/manim LICENSE
      url: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ManimCommunity/manim/main/LICENSE'
    - title: 3b1b/manim LICENSE.md
      url: 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/3b1b/manim/master/LICENSE.md'
  created: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed: '2026-10-23'
  reviewed_by: 'Claude, from the sources listed'
  status: draft
---
Manim is a Python library for making animations precisely, in code, the kind used to explain mathematics.[^1,2] Instead of moving shapes by hand on a timeline, a person writes a short script that describes a scene: draw a square, turn it, change it into a circle.[^1] Manim renders the script to a video file.[^1] A quick low-quality render lets the author check a scene before the final one, and the community edition can also run inside Jupyter notebooks and in an online Jupyter environment without installing anything.[^1]

Grant Sanderson wrote it as a personal project to animate the videos on his YouTube channel, 3Blue1Brown, and released it as open source.[^2,3] The GitHub repository dates from March 2015.[^2] As the channel grew, other people wanted the same style for their own work, but the tool was hard to install and use.[^3] In mid-2020 a group of developers forked it into the community edition, aiming to make it more stable, better tested and documented, and quicker to take in contributions.[^2,3] Sanderson still maintains his own version, now called ManimGL, which renders through OpenGL and has more experimental features; the community recommends its edition especially for beginners.[^1,3] The two are installed differently and their instructions should not be mixed.[^1,2]

Both are under the MIT licence; both licence files name 3Blue1Brown LLC as the copyright holder.[^4,5] ManimGL needs FFmpeg and OpenGL, with LaTeX optional for typeset formulas.[^2] The community edition also publishes a Docker image.[^1]

Manim is built for explanation: each object on screen is placed and moved exactly, so the same script can be run again when the numbers change.