head to head · open source
chatbox vs AionUi
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. AionUi has 32,965 stars, 3,410 forks, 905 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. chatbox leads on adoption by 27% (41,814 vs 32,965 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; AionUi is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, AionUi 10%. chatbox was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (chatbot, claude-code, gemini), 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
| chatbox | AionUi | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 33K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chatbox if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick AionUi if
- You want the AionUi feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and AionUi fits your workflow better
About chatbox
Chatbox (Community Edition) is a cross platform desktop client for large language models, written in TypeScript and released under the GPL 3.0 license. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and it connects to a range of providers including OpenAI (ChatGPT), Azure OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini Pro, Ollama and ChatGLM 6B. The project lives in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, where desktop chat front ends sit between a user and one or more hosted or locally hosted model APIs. The repository carries 41,767 stars and 4,251 forks across four years of history.
read the full chatbox overview →
About AionUi
AionUi is an open source, cross platform Cowork application that puts AI agents to work alongside the user on their own computer. It is written in TypeScript and released under the Apache 2.0 license, and it lives in the AI agent and chat tooling ecosystem alongside the command line agents it is built to host. Rather than acting as a plain chat client, it runs a built in agent engine that can read and write files, search the web, generate images, and call Model Context Protocol tools, while showing the user every action the agent takes and keeping approval in the user's hands.
read the full AionUi overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or AionUi more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and AionUi has 32,965. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and AionUi free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and AionUi under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and AionUi?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and AionUi 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, chatbox or AionUi?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose AionUi if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.