head to head · open source
chatbox vs assistant-ui
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. assistant-ui has 12,217 stars, 1,185 forks, 207 open issues and last shipped today. chatbox leads on adoption by 242% (41,814 vs 12,217 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; assistant-ui is written in TypeScript under MIT. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, assistant-ui 10%. assistant-ui was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (chatbot, copilot), 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 | assistant-ui | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 12K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| 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 assistant-ui if
- You want the assistant-ui feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and assistant-ui 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 assistant-ui
assistant ui is an open source TypeScript and React library, released under the MIT licence, for building production grade AI chat experiences quickly, and it is aimed at frontend and full stack developers who need the user experience of ChatGPT inside their own React application.
read the full assistant-ui overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or assistant-ui more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and assistant-ui has 12,217. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and assistant-ui free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and assistant-ui under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and assistant-ui?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and assistant-ui 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 assistant-ui?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose assistant-ui if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.