head to head · open source
chatbox vs botman
chatbox has 42,253 GitHub stars, 4,310 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. botman has 6,147 stars, 811 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. chatbox leads on adoption by 587% (42,253 vs 6,147 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; botman is written in PHP under MIT. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, botman 13%. chatbox was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chatbot), 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 | botman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-10-29 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 811 |
| 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 botman if
- You want the botman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and botman fits your workflow better
About chatbox
English 简体中文 Chatbox (Community Edition) Your Ultimate AI Copilot on the Desktop. Chatbox is a desktop client for ChatGPT, Claude and other LLMs, available on Windows, Mac, Linux This is the repository for the Chatbox Community Edition, open sourced under the GPLv3 license. Chatbox is going open source Again! We regularly sync code from the pro repo to this repo, and vice versa. Download Desktop Windows MacOS Linux Setup.exe Intel Apple Silicon AppImage iOS/Android .APK For more information: chatboxai.app Quick Start For End Users 1. Download the appropriate installer for your platform from the releases page 2…
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About botman
BotMan If you want to learn how to create reusable PHP packages yourself, take a look at my upcoming PHP Package Development video course. About BotMan BotMan is a framework agnostic PHP library that is designed to simplify the task of developing innovative bots for multiple messaging platforms, including Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Bot Framework, Nexmo, HipChat, Facebook Messenger and WeChat. If you want to learn how to create reusable PHP packages yourself, take a look at my upcoming PHP Package Development video course. Documentation You can find the BotMan documentation at Stand Alone Configuration If you are…
read the full botman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or botman more popular?
chatbox has 42,253 GitHub stars and botman has 6,147. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and botman free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and botman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and botman?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and botman in PHP. 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 botman?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (42,253 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose botman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.