head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs kotaemon
Cherry Studio has 53,202 GitHub stars, 5,164 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,849 stars, 2,164 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 106% (53,202 vs 25,849 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. Cherry Studio was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 53K | ★ 26K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.2K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cherry Studio if
- You weight community size — 53K 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 kotaemon if
- You want the kotaemon feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and kotaemon fits your workflow better
About Cherry Studio
English Official Site Documents Development Feedback [![][deepwiki shield]][deepwiki link] [![][twitter shield]][twitter link] [![][discord shield]][discord link] [![][telegram shield]][telegram link] [![][github release shield]][github release link] [![][github nightly shield]][github nightly link] [![][github contributors shield]][github contributors link] [![][license shield]][license link] [![][commercial shield]][commercial link] [![][sponsor shield]][sponsor link] 🍒 Cherry Studio Cherry Studio is a desktop client that supports multiple LLM providers, available on Windows, Mac and Linux. 👏 Join Telegram…
read the full Cherry Studio overview →
About kotaemon
kotaemon An open source clean & customizable RAG UI for chatting with your documents. Built with both end users and developers in mind. Live Demo 1 Live Demo 2 Online Install Colab Notebook (Local RAG) User Guide Developer Guide Feedback Contact Introduction This project serves as a functional RAG UI for both end users who want to do QA on their documents and developers who want to build their own RAG pipeline. For end users Clean & Minimalistic UI : A user friendly interface for RAG based QA. Support for Various LLMs : Compatible with LLM API providers (OpenAI, AzureOpenAI, Cohere, etc.) and local LLMs (via…
read the full kotaemon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or kotaemon more popular?
Cherry Studio has 53,202 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,849. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kotaemon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and kotaemon?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and kotaemon in Python. 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 kotaemon?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (53,202 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.