head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs Sidekick
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars, 4,978 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped today. Sidekick has 3,313 stars, 148 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 1,470% (52,003 vs 3,313 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Sidekick is written in Swift under MIT. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Sidekick 4%. Cherry Studio 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 | Sidekick | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-05-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 148 |
| 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 Sidekick if
- You want the Sidekick feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and Sidekick 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 Sidekick
Sidekick is a native macOS application that lets a user chat with a local large language model which can answer using the contents of files, folders, and websites on that Mac, without installing any other software.
read the full Sidekick overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or Sidekick more popular?
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars and Sidekick has 3,313. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and Sidekick free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Sidekick under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and Sidekick?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and Sidekick in Swift. 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 Sidekick?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (52,003 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Sidekick if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.