head to head · open source
caveman vs codegraph
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars, 6,296 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped today. codegraph has 72,644 stars, 4,664 forks, 515 open issues and last shipped today. caveman leads on adoption by 50% (108,615 vs 72,644 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; codegraph is written in C under MIT. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, codegraph 6%. codegraph was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| caveman | codegraph | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 109K | ★ 73K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 4.7K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caveman if
- You weight community size — 109K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick codegraph if
- You want the codegraph feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and codegraph fits your workflow better
About caveman
why use many token when few do trick Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop. ▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works" 🏆 1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026 · 🥇 1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026 1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments · 8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN , an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3× · 🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality" ⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills…
read the full caveman overview →
About codegraph
CodeGraph is a pre indexed code knowledge graph that runs locally and wires into AI coding agents — Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, AntiGravity, Kiro, GitHub Copilot, and Hermes Agent — so those agents query a semantic map of the codebase instead of reading files one at a time.
read the full codegraph overview →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More AI Assisted Coding projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Assisted Coding field.
Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or codegraph more popular?
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars and codegraph has 72,644. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and codegraph free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and codegraph under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and codegraph?
caveman is written in Go and codegraph in C. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, caveman or codegraph?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (108,615 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose codegraph if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.