head to head · open source
chatbox vs sim
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. sim has 29,680 stars, 3,843 forks, 336 open issues and last shipped today. chatbox leads on adoption by 41% (41,814 vs 29,680 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; sim is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, sim 13%. sim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (chatbot, 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
| chatbox | sim | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 30K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| 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 sim if
- You want the sim feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sim 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 sim
Sim is an open source collaborative workspace for building, deploying, and monitoring AI agents and workflows. It lives in the TypeScript ecosystem and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, with a repository that has accumulated roughly 29,600 stars and 3,800 forks over its two year history. The project positions itself as a single surface where chat, workflows, tables, files, and knowledge coexist, whether accessed through a browser or a desktop application for macOS.
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or sim more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and sim has 29,680. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and sim free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and sim under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and sim?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and sim 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 sim?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose sim if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.