head to head · open source
chatbox vs eliza
chatbox has 41,791 GitHub stars, 4,252 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. eliza has 19,354 stars, 5,739 forks, 1,069 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chatbox leads on adoption by 116% (41,791 vs 19,354 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; eliza is written in TypeScript under MIT. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, eliza 30%. eliza 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 | eliza | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 19K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 5.7K |
| 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 eliza if
- You want the eliza feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and eliza 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 eliza
elizaOS is an open source, MIT licensed TypeScript framework and product stack for autonomous AI agents, built for developers who want to run or extend their own agent runtime and for end users who want a personal agent app on web, desktop, and mobile.
read the full eliza overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or eliza more popular?
chatbox has 41,791 GitHub stars and eliza has 19,354. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and eliza free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and eliza under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and eliza?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and eliza 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 eliza?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,791 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose eliza if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.