head to head · open source
chatbox vs claude-chat-exporter
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. claude-chat-exporter has 691 stars, 79 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 11 days ago. chatbox leads on adoption by 5,951% (41,814 vs 691 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; claude-chat-exporter is written in JavaScript under MIT. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, claude-chat-exporter 11%. chatbox was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (claude), 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
| chatbox | claude-chat-exporter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 691 |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 79 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chatbox if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick claude-chat-exporter if
- You want the claude-chat-exporter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and claude-chat-exporter fits your workflow better
About chatbox
Chatbox (Community Edition) is a cross platform desktop client for large language models, written in TypeScript and released under the GPL 3.0 license. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and it connects to a range of providers including OpenAI (ChatGPT), Azure OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini Pro, Ollama and ChatGLM 6B. The project lives in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, where desktop chat front ends sit between a user and one or more hosted or locally hosted model APIs. The repository carries 41,767 stars and 4,251 forks across four years of history.
read the full chatbox overview →
About claude-chat-exporter
claude chat exporter is a browser based, privacy first exporter that turns Claude.ai conversations into clean Markdown files with their artifacts, attachments and timestamps intact, built for people who archive chats into an Obsidian vault or feed them into a RAG pipeline.
read the full claude-chat-exporter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or claude-chat-exporter more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and claude-chat-exporter has 691. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and claude-chat-exporter free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and claude-chat-exporter under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and claude-chat-exporter?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and claude-chat-exporter in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chatbox or claude-chat-exporter?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose claude-chat-exporter if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.