head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs Zammad
Chatwoot has 36,913 GitHub stars, 8,958 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zammad has 5,924 stars, 1,056 forks, 451 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 523% (36,913 vs 5,924 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; Zammad is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, Zammad 18%. 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.
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Side by side
| Chatwoot | Zammad | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 5.9K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.0K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 Zammad if
- You want the Zammad feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Zammad 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 Zammad
Zammad is a web based, open source helpdesk and customer support platform, released under the GNU AGPLv3 and written primarily in Ruby on the Rails framework. The source code lives on GitHub and is owned by the Zammad Foundation, an entity that the README describes as independent of commercial providers such as Zammad GmbH. Development is carried out by the team at Zammad GmbH together with the community, and the project states that the software is and will stay open source.
read the full Zammad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or Zammad more popular?
Chatwoot has 36,913 GitHub stars and Zammad has 5,924. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and Zammad free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and Zammad is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and Zammad?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and Zammad in Ruby. 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 Zammad?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (36,913 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Zammad if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.