head to head · open source
LibreChat vs chatbox
LibreChat has 44,217 GitHub stars, 9,087 forks, 732 open issues and last shipped yesterday. chatbox has 41,791 stars, 4,252 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. LibreChat leads on adoption by 6% (44,217 vs 41,791 stars). LibreChat is written in TypeScript under MIT; chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. LibreChat has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, chatbox 10%. LibreChat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (chatgpt, claude, deepseek, 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.
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Side by side
| LibreChat | chatbox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 44K | ★ 42K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 4.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LibreChat if
- You weight community size — 44K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chatbox if
- You want the chatbox feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and chatbox fits your workflow better
About LibreChat
LibreChat is an open source, self hostable chat interface designed as an enhanced ChatGPT clone. It unifies access to multiple AI models—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and others—within a single web application. Built in TypeScript, it supports real time streaming, multi model switching, and advanced agent workflows while providing features like message search, artifacts, code interpreter, and secure multi user authentication.
read the full LibreChat overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LibreChat or chatbox more popular?
LibreChat has 44,217 GitHub stars and chatbox has 41,791. LibreChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LibreChat and chatbox free?
Both are open source. LibreChat is licensed under MIT and chatbox under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LibreChat and chatbox?
LibreChat is written in TypeScript and chatbox 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, LibreChat or chatbox?
Choose LibreChat if you want the larger community (44,217 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose chatbox if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.