I’ve been looking at GitHub repos and noticed they show language statistics as percentages. But I can’t find anywhere that shows the actual line count for the whole project.
When I want to understand how big a project is, knowing the total lines helps a lot. Like if something has 1000 lines it’s probably simple, but 50000+ lines means it’s pretty complex.
Is there a way to see the actual line counts for different programming languages in a GitHub repo? I really don’t want to download the entire project just to count lines, especially for huge repositories.
I know you can count lines locally after cloning, but that’s not practical because:
Some repos are huge and take forever to download
You end up counting non-code files too
You have to figure out which file types to include
GitHub’s language stats don’t show actual numbers, but the GitHub API does. Just go to https://api.github.com/repos/username/repository/languages and you’ll get byte counts for each language in the repo. It’s not exact line counts, but it’s a decent way to gauge project size - more bytes usually means more code. I use this all the time when checking out open source libraries before contributing or adding them to my projects. The API is fast and you don’t need to download anything.
I got sick of manually checking repos and guessing at their complexity. Game changer was building an automated workflow that pulls repo data and creates detailed reports.
Build a simple automation using GitHub’s API to grab language data, then run it through multiple endpoints for better estimates. Hit different API endpoints, compare file extensions, and factor in typical lines-per-byte ratios for each language.
Mine runs whenever I star a repo or add it to my watchlist. Auto-generates reports with estimated line counts, complexity scores, and tracks changes over time. Beats manual checking or downloading massive repos.
Runs in the background and gives me everything I need to evaluate projects fast. Can trigger it manually for specific repos too.
Latenode makes this automation dead simple. Connect GitHub’s API, add processing logic, done. No coding needed.
Found CodeHub for Chrome about a year ago - it’s been great for quick project checks. Most extensions just guess from file sizes, but this one actually hits GitHub’s tree API and calculates line counts using file sizes and language patterns. Takes 10-15 seconds even for huge repos like React or Angular. It’s not 100% accurate but good enough to tell if you’re looking at a tiny utility or massive framework. Best part is the breakdown shows right in the repo header, so you can compare multiple projects fast when hunting for solutions. Only catch is private repos need extra permissions, but for public stuff it beats cloning everything just to get a sense of scope.
tokei is super handy for counting lines of code quickly! Just use tokei https://github.com/user/repo, and it’ll give you a nice breakdown by language without having to download the whole repo. Much quicker than cloning!
Browser extensions like GitHub Repository Size and CodeStats are your best bet. They show line counts right in the GitHub interface - no API calls or command line hassle. I’ve used GitHub Repository Size for six months and it displays approximate counts next to the language percentages. Not perfect accuracy but good enough to gauge project size. It caches everything so repeat visits load instantly. Way easier than memorizing API endpoints or installing extra tools. Only issue is the initial load can take a few seconds, but that’s still better than downloading entire repos just to run wc commands.
cloc’s perfect for this - just run cloc . in your project folder and it’ll break everything down by language while skipping comments and blank lines. Way more accurate than trying to guess from byte counts.