head to head · open source
chatbox vs hope-agent
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. hope-agent has 1,605 stars, 153 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chatbox leads on adoption by 2,505% (41,814 vs 1,605 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; hope-agent is written in Rust under MIT. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, hope-agent 10%. hope-agent 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, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| chatbox | hope-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 153 |
| 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 hope-agent if
- You want the hope-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and hope-agent 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 hope-agent
Hope Agent is a local first, cross device desktop AI agent written in Rust that keeps long term memory, pursues goals autonomously, dynamically orchestrates multiple agents, and can also run headlessly as a resident service, for individuals and teams who want an assistant that works on their own desktop, NAS, or cloud host.
read the full hope-agent overview →
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More AI Interaction & Interfaces projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Interaction & Interfaces field.
Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or hope-agent more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and hope-agent has 1,605. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and hope-agent free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and hope-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and hope-agent?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and hope-agent in Rust. 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 hope-agent?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose hope-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.