head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs LibreChat
Cherry Studio has 51,923 GitHub stars, 4,976 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LibreChat has 44,217 stars, 9,087 forks, 732 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 17% (51,923 vs 44,217 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; LibreChat is written in TypeScript under MIT. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, LibreChat 21%. LibreChat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (deepseek), 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 | LibreChat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 44K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 9.1K |
| 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 LibreChat if
- You want the LibreChat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and LibreChat 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 LibreChat
LibreChat is an open source, self hostable chat interface designed as an enhanced ChatGPT clone. It unifies access to multiple AI models—including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, and others—within a single web application. Built in TypeScript, it supports real time streaming, multi model switching, and advanced agent workflows while providing features like message search, artifacts, code interpreter, and secure multi user authentication.
read the full LibreChat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or LibreChat more popular?
Cherry Studio has 51,923 GitHub stars and LibreChat has 44,217. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and LibreChat free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and LibreChat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and LibreChat?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and LibreChat 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 LibreChat?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (51,923 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose LibreChat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.