head to head · open source
cobalt vs Campfire
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars, 3,798 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. Campfire has 4,629 stars, 792 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 836% (43,316 vs 4,629 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; Campfire is written in Ruby under MIT. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Campfire 17%. Campfire 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
| cobalt | Campfire | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 4.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Svelte | Ruby |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.8K | ⑂ 792 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 43K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Svelte
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Campfire if
- You want the Campfire feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You evaluated both and Campfire fits your workflow better
About cobalt
cobalt is a media downloader built around a single promise: paste a link, get the file, move on. It is a monorepo containing the source for an API, a web frontend, and related packages, written primarily in Svelte and TypeScript. The project lives in the modern web and JavaScript ecosystem, and its public surface is hosted at cobalt.tools, while the full codebase is published under the AGPL 3.0 license.
read the full cobalt overview →
About Campfire
Campfire is a web based group chat application in the Business Software / Collaboration & Communication category. It is written in Ruby, released under the MIT license, and presented as a self hosted service that avoids recurring subscription fees. The project lives in the Ruby and Docker self hosting ecosystem, with its homepage at https://once.com/campfire and its published Docker image at ghcr.io/basecamp/once campfire:latest.
read the full Campfire overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or Campfire more popular?
cobalt has 43,316 GitHub stars and Campfire has 4,629. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and Campfire free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Campfire under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and Campfire?
cobalt is written in Svelte and Campfire in Ruby. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, cobalt or Campfire?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (43,316 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Campfire if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.