head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs rt
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars, 9,429 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rt has 1,167 stars, 299 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 3,221% (38,752 vs 1,167 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; rt is written in Perl under GPL-2.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, rt 26%. rt was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (customer-support), 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
| Chatwoot | rt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Perl |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 299 |
| 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 rt if
- You want the rt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Perl
- You evaluated both and rt 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 rt
Request Tracker (RT) RT is an open source, enterprise grade issue and ticket tracking system. Explore RT docs » Release Notes · Community Forum · Public Wiki · Blog · Hosting & Support RT allows organizations to keep track of what needs to get done, who is working on which tasks, what's already been done, and when tasks were (or weren't) completed. RT doesn't cost anything to use, no matter how much you use it; it is freely available under the terms of Version 2 of the GNU General Public License. RT is commercially supported software. To purchase hosting, support, training, custom development, or professional…
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Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or rt more popular?
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars and rt has 1,167. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and rt free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and rt is licensed under GPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and rt?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and rt in Perl. 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 rt?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (38,752 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose rt if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.