head to head · open source
deepwiki-open vs liam
deepwiki-open has 18,015 GitHub stars, 2,004 forks, 269 open issues and last shipped 17 days ago. liam has 5,116 stars, 239 forks, 29 open issues and last shipped yesterday. deepwiki-open leads on adoption by 252% (18,015 vs 5,116 stars). deepwiki-open is written in Python under MIT; liam is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. deepwiki-open has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, liam 5%. liam 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
| deepwiki-open | liam | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 18K | ★ 5.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-03 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.0K | ⑂ 239 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick deepwiki-open if
- You weight community size — 18K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick liam if
- You want the liam feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and liam fits your workflow better
About deepwiki-open
DeepWiki Open, also published as Grok Wiki, is an open source wiki generator for source code repositories. It takes a GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket repository name as input and produces a navigable documentation site for that codebase. The project is written in Python and released under the MIT License, and the author describes it plainly as a personal implementation attempt at DeepWiki. It lives in the AI developer tooling ecosystem alongside the model providers and coding agents its topic list names, including OpenAI, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama, Codex, and grok cli.
read the full deepwiki-open overview →
About liam
Liam is an open source TypeScript tool that automatically generates beautiful, interactive ER diagrams from an existing database schema, built for developers and teams who need to read, document, and share the structure of a database without drawing diagrams by hand.
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Frequently asked questions
Is deepwiki-open or liam more popular?
deepwiki-open has 18,015 GitHub stars and liam has 5,116. deepwiki-open has the larger community by that measure.
Are deepwiki-open and liam free?
Both are open source. deepwiki-open is licensed under MIT and liam under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between deepwiki-open and liam?
deepwiki-open is written in Python and liam 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, deepwiki-open or liam?
Choose deepwiki-open if you want the larger community (18,015 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose liam if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.