head to head · open source
caveman vs Tabby
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars, 6,296 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped today. Tabby has 33,886 stars, 1,790 forks, 335 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. caveman leads on adoption by 221% (108,615 vs 33,886 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Tabby is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Tabby 5%. caveman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai), 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 | Tabby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 109K | ★ 34K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-06-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| 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 Tabby if
- You want the Tabby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Tabby 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 Tabby
Tabby is a self hosted, open source AI coding assistant that acts as an on premises alternative to GitHub Copilot, aimed at developers and engineering teams that want code completion and chat without routing source code through a third party cloud service.
read the full Tabby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or Tabby more popular?
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars and Tabby has 33,886. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and Tabby free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0, and Tabby has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between caveman and Tabby?
caveman is written in Go and Tabby 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 Tabby?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (108,615 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Tabby if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.