head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs Znuny
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars, 9,429 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Znuny has 611 stars, 129 forks, 120 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 6,242% (38,752 vs 611 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; Znuny is written in Perl under GPL-3.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, Znuny 21%. 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 | Znuny | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 611 |
| License | Custom / other | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Perl |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.4K | ⑂ 129 |
| 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 Znuny if
- You want the Znuny feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Perl
- You evaluated both and Znuny 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 Znuny
Znuny ======= Znuny is a continuation of the ((OTRS)) Community Edition (version 6.0.30) which was declared end of life (EOL) at the end of December 2020. The primary goal for this project is to provide a maintained and stable version of the well known ticket system and improve it with new features. The second goal is to reestablish a connection to the community. License ======= The project is distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL v3) see the accompanying COPYING file for general license information. If you need more details you can have a look here. Documentation ============= You can find…
read the full Znuny overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or Znuny more popular?
Chatwoot has 38,752 GitHub stars and Znuny has 611. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and Znuny free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and Znuny is licensed under GPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and Znuny?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and Znuny 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 Znuny?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (38,752 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Znuny if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.