A Vanta.js alternative, a decade newer

Vanta.js proved the idea: a website background belongs on the GPU, not in a video file. Shadertown is that idea rebuilt for the platform the web has now — WebGPU instead of WebGL, typed params instead of an options object, and source you can own instead of only import.

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Where Vanta stops

Vanta is free, MIT-licensed, and has earned its decade of service — credit where due. It is also fourteen effects on top of three.js, configured through an untyped options object, drawn by WebGL. None of that is wrong; all of it is 2018.

What changes on WebGPU

Shadertown's 77 shaders are WGSL fragment stages drawn by vgpu — no three.js in the dependency tree, no scene graph for what is ultimately a fullscreen quad. Params are typed per shader, so the compiler catches the option Vanta would silently ignore. WebGPU ships by default in Chrome, Edge, and Safari 26.

The trade, stated plainly

Vanta costs nothing and runs on WebGL's near-universal support. Shadertown's runtime is free on npm and every shader tunes free in the browser, but owning Professional source is paid, and WebGPU is newer — the component holds a fallback for browsers that lack it. If those trades run your way, the catalogue is the argument.

Flow

The layer pushed around by a slow, turbulent field

liquidorganicambient

Starfield

A warp corridor of depth-sorted stars

spacemotiondark

Silk

A sheen running across folded fibres

fabricsoftluxury

Gravity

A starfield lensed by a mass that rides the pointer

interactivepointerdarkhero

Keep going

Animated website backgrounds
The category page: what a computed background buys.
Interactive backgrounds
The pointer-reactive shaders, Vanta's home turf.
The performance notes
What a shader background costs, and how to cap it.

Run the comparison yourself

Every shader here runs live, free, in the browser you are holding. Put one next to your current background and look.

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