head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs iTop
Chatwoot has 36,913 GitHub stars, 8,958 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. iTop has 1,181 stars, 297 forks, 63 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 3,026% (36,913 vs 1,181 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; iTop is written in PHP under AGPL-3.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, iTop 25%. Chatwoot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Chatwoot | iTop | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 297 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Chatwoot if
- You weight community size — 37K 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 iTop if
- You want the iTop feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and iTop fits your workflow better
About Chatwoot
Chatwoot is a Ruby based, open source, self hosted customer support platform that consolidates live chat, email, and social messaging into one omnichannel inbox, positioned as an open alternative to Intercom, Twilio, Zendesk, and Salesforce Service Cloud.
read the full Chatwoot overview →
About iTop
iTop, short for IT Operations Portal, is an open source, web based IT service management platform that is sponsored, led, and supported by Combodo. It bundles a fully customizable configuration management database, a helpdesk and ticketing system, and a document management tool into one application. The project is written in PHP and released under the AGPL 3.0 license, and it has been developed in public for roughly eight years with community contributions tracked on GitHub.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or iTop more popular?
Chatwoot has 36,913 GitHub stars and iTop has 1,181. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and iTop free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and iTop is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and iTop?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and iTop in PHP. 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 iTop?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (36,913 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose iTop if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.