head to head · open source
chat vs blocksuite
chat has 13,548 GitHub stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. blocksuite has 6,082 stars, 565 forks, 196 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. chat leads on adoption by 123% (13,548 vs 6,082 stars). chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0; blocksuite is written in TypeScript under MPL-2.0. chat has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, blocksuite 9%. blocksuite was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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
| chat | blocksuite | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 14K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-25 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.1K | ⑂ 565 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chat if
- You weight community size — 14K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick blocksuite if
- You want the blocksuite feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and blocksuite fits your workflow better
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
About blocksuite
BlockSuite Overview People who are really serious about editor should make their own framework. BlockSuite is a toolkit for building editors and collaborative applications. It implements a series of content editing infrastructures, UI components and editors independently. You can consider BlockSuite as a UI component library for building various editors, based on a minimized vanilla framework as their runtime. With BlockSuite, you can: Reuse multiple first party BlockSuite editors: PageEditor : A comprehensive block based document editor, offering extensive customization and flexibility. EdgelessEditor : A…
read the full blocksuite overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chat or blocksuite more popular?
chat has 13,548 GitHub stars and blocksuite has 6,082. chat has the larger community by that measure.
Are chat and blocksuite free?
Both are open source. chat is licensed under GPL-3.0 and blocksuite under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chat and blocksuite?
chat is written in Go and blocksuite in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chat or blocksuite?
Choose chat if you want the larger community (13,548 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose blocksuite if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.