head to head · open source
caveman vs rtk
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars, 6,296 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped today. rtk has 82,125 stars, 5,213 forks, 1,642 open issues and last shipped today. caveman leads on adoption by 32% (108,615 vs 82,125 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; rtk is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, rtk 6%. caveman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (anthropic, claude-code, llm), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| caveman | rtk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 109K | ★ 82K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 5.2K |
| 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 rtk if
- You want the rtk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rtk 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 rtk
rtk is an Apache 2.0 Rust CLI proxy that sits between an AI coding agent and the shell, filtering and compressing command output so 60 90% fewer tokens reach the model, and it is built for developers running agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex against real repositories.
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or rtk more popular?
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars and rtk has 82,125. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and rtk free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and rtk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and rtk?
caveman is written in Go and rtk in Rust. 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 rtk?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (108,615 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose rtk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.