head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs Frappe Helpdesk
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars, 9,429 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Frappe Helpdesk has 3,472 stars, 996 forks, 159 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 1,016% (38,752 vs 3,472 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; Frappe Helpdesk is written in Vue under AGPL-3.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, Frappe Helpdesk 29%. Chatwoot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (customer-support, javascript), 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
| Chatwoot | Frappe Helpdesk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 3.5K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Vue |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 996 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Chatwoot if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Frappe Helpdesk if
- You want the Frappe Helpdesk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You evaluated both and Frappe Helpdesk fits your workflow better
About Chatwoot
Chatwoot The modern customer support platform, an open source alternative to Intercom, Zendesk, Salesforce Service Cloud etc. Chatwoot is the modern, open source, and self hosted customer support platform designed to help businesses deliver exceptional customer support experience. Built for scale and flexibility, Chatwoot gives you full control over your customer data while providing powerful tools to manage conversations across channels. ✨ Captain – AI Agent for Support Supercharge your support with Captain, Chatwoot’s AI agent. Captain helps automate responses, handle common queries, and reduce agent…
read the full Chatwoot overview →
About Frappe Helpdesk
Frappe Helpdesk Customer Service, Made Simple and Effective Website Documentation Frappe Helpdesk Frappe Helpdesk is an 100% open source Ticket Management tool which helps you streamline your company's support, offers an easy setup, clean user interface, and automation tools to resolve customer queries efficiently. Motivation Managing issues from our customers was a big challenge for us. We were using the ERPNext support module which was not very good in UI and the UX was also not good. We wanted to have a tool that can be easily integrated with our existing system and can be customized as per our needs. So we…
read the full Frappe Helpdesk overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Customer Support & Success projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Customer Support & Success field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or Frappe Helpdesk more popular?
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars and Frappe Helpdesk has 3,472. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and Frappe Helpdesk free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and Frappe Helpdesk is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and Frappe Helpdesk?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and Frappe Helpdesk in Vue. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Chatwoot or Frappe Helpdesk?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (38,752 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Frappe Helpdesk if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.