head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs Zammad
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars, 9,429 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zammad has 6,067 stars, 1,093 forks, 451 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 539% (38,752 vs 6,067 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 | ★ 39K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 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 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 Zammad
Welcome to Zammad Are you juggling countless customer inquiries across multiple channels? Struggling to keep your support team on the same page? Or spending more time managing your helpdesk than delivering exceptional support to your customers? Zammad is your Swiss Army knife a web based, open source helpdesk and customer support platform packed with features to streamline customer communication across channels like email, chat, telephone and social media. The Software The Zammad software is and will stay open source. It is licensed under the GNU AGPLv3. The source code is available on GitHub and owned by the…
read the full Zammad overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or Zammad more popular?
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars and Zammad has 6,067. 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 (38,752 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.