head to head · open source
chatbox vs FastGPT
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. FastGPT has 29,694 stars, 7,319 forks, 172 open issues and last shipped today. chatbox leads on adoption by 41% (41,814 vs 29,694 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; FastGPT is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, FastGPT 25%. FastGPT was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (claude, deepseek, openai), 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 | FastGPT | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 30K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 7.3K |
| 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 FastGPT if
- You want the FastGPT feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and FastGPT 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 FastGPT
FastGPT is an open source AI knowledge base platform built on large language models (LLMs). It provides integrated tools for data ingestion, vector retrieval (RAG), and visual workflow orchestration, enabling users to construct and deploy question answering applications without writing extensive backend code. The platform runs on Next.js and supports integration with multiple LLM providers including OpenAI, Claude, DeepSeek, Qwen, and others.
read the full FastGPT overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or FastGPT more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and FastGPT has 29,694. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and FastGPT free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0, and FastGPT has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between chatbox and FastGPT?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and FastGPT 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 FastGPT?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose FastGPT if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.