# Fanfa

12 Hacker News commenters recommended Fanfa and 3 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Lets people make consistent, animated Mermaid diagrams that stand out. Critics mostly report sluggishness on Firefox.

## Why people recommend it

- Animated, code-friendly diagrams (2 comments): "Looking quite promising! I would love to use this as a code friendly animated diagraming tool." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46203501)) "take a front row seat to watch your code execute" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46224504))

## What people warn about

- Sluggish or CPU-heavy on Firefox (2 comments): "This graph here has display issues. And the CPU is used waay too much on firefox" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46200624)) "The animation and the whole interface are sluggish on firefox/linux." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46202414))
- Animations not retained across nodes (2 comments): "The animations don't seem to be retained across nodes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46218089)) "I don't see anything animated except a bit on load?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199181))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Mermaid](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mermaid.md): 93 recommend
- [Reladraw](https://hackerapproved.com/p/reladraw.md): 28 recommend
- [SQL to ER diagram tool](https://hackerapproved.com/p/free-sql-to-er-diagram-tool.md): 27 recommend
- [D2 diagram language](https://hackerapproved.com/p/d2.md): 21 recommend
- [PlantUML](https://hackerapproved.com/p/plantuml.md): 16 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Fanfa", https://hackerapproved.com/p/fanfa/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).