head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs cindy
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars, 4,978 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped today. cindy has 2,765 stars, 405 forks, 1,390 open issues and last shipped today. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 1,781% (52,003 vs 2,765 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; cindy is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, cindy 15%. cindy was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-agent, claude-code, codex), 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
| Cherry Studio | cindy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 2.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 405 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cherry Studio if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick cindy if
- You want the cindy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and cindy fits your workflow better
About Cherry Studio
Cherry Studio is a cross platform desktop application for interacting with large language models, built in TypeScript under the AGPL 3.0 license. It operates in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, providing a unified interface to access cloud hosted models (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic), web services (Claude, Poe, Perplexity), and locally hosted models via Ollama or LM Studio.
read the full Cherry Studio overview →
About cindy
Cindy is an open source AI agent that works out of the box: a TypeScript desktop and mobile client that runs locally on your own machine, uses your real files and logged in apps, and folds multiple agent harnesses, models and tools into one agent aimed at people who want finished work rather than another chat window.
read the full cindy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or cindy more popular?
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars and cindy has 2,765. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and cindy free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and cindy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and cindy?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and cindy in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Cherry Studio or cindy?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (52,003 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose cindy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.