head to head · open source
cobalt vs chat
cobalt has 45,779 GitHub stars, 4,042 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. chat has 13,548 stars, 2,093 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 10 days ago. cobalt leads on adoption by 238% (45,779 vs 13,548 stars). cobalt is written in Svelte under AGPL-3.0; chat is written in Go under GPL-3.0. cobalt has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, chat 15%. chat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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
| cobalt | chat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 46K | ★ 14K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Svelte | Go |
| Last push | 2026-04-06 | 2026-10-25 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.0K | ⑂ 2.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick cobalt if
- You weight community size — 46K 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 chat if
- You want the chat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and chat fits your workflow better
About cobalt
best way to save what you love cobalt.tools 💬 community discord server 🐦 twitter 🦋 bluesky cobalt is a media downloader that doesn't piss you off. it's friendly, efficient, and doesn't have ads, trackers, paywalls or other nonsense. paste the link, get the file, move on. that simple, just how it should be. cobalt monorepo this monorepo includes source code for api, frontend, and related packages: api tree & readme web tree & readme packages tree it also includes documentation in the docs tree: how to run a cobalt instance how to protect a cobalt instance cobalt api instance environment variables cobalt api…
read the full cobalt overview →
About chat
Tinode Instant Messaging Server Instant messaging full stack. Backend in pure Go (license GPL 3.0), clients for Android (Java), iOS (Swift), and web (ReactJS), as well as gRPC client support for C++, C , Go, Java, Node, PHP, Python, Ruby, Objective C, etc (all clients licensed under Apache 2.0). Wire transport is JSON over websocket (long polling is also available) or protobuf with gRPC. This is beta quality software: feature complete and stable but probably with a few bugs or missing features. Follow instructions to install and run or use one of the cloud services below. Read API documentation. Tinode is not…
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Frequently asked questions
Is cobalt or chat more popular?
cobalt has 45,779 GitHub stars and chat has 13,548. cobalt has the larger community by that measure.
Are cobalt and chat free?
Both are open source. cobalt is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and chat under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between cobalt and chat?
cobalt is written in Svelte and chat in Go. 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 chat?
Choose cobalt if you want the larger community (45,779 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose chat if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.