head to head · open source
Dify vs Cairn
Dify has 160,251 GitHub stars, 25,336 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cairn has 4,757 stars, 922 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Dify leads on adoption by 3,269% (160,251 vs 4,757 stars). Dify is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; Cairn is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Cairn 19%. Dify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, llm), 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
| Dify | Cairn | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 160K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | Custom / other | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-07 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 922 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Dify if
- You weight community size — 160K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Cairn if
- You want the Cairn feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Cairn fits your workflow better
About Dify
Dify Cloud · Self hosting · Documentation · Dify edition overview Dify is an open source LLM app development platform. Its intuitive interface combines AI workflow, RAG pipeline, agent capabilities, model management, observability features (including Opik, Langfuse, and Arize Phoenix) and more, letting you quickly go from prototype to production. Here's a list of the core features: Quick start Before installing Dify, make sure your machine meets the following minimum system requirements: CPU = 2 Core RAM = 4 GiB The easiest way to start the Dify server is through Docker Compose. Before running Dify with the…
About Cairn
Cairn More Than Just AI Penetration Testing — Towards General State Space Search Cairn is a general purpose problem solving engine. It defines no roles, no workflows. Given an origin and a goal, it searches for a path through an unknown state space. AI Penetration Testing is one such problem — and a proven one. What is Cairn? Penetration testing is fundamentally a directed search through a near infinite state space : Origin : known (target IP, target system) Goal : defined (get a shell, capture the flag) Path : unknown This structure is not unique to penetration testing. Vulnerability research, mathematical…
read the full Cairn overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or Cairn more popular?
Dify has 160,251 GitHub stars and Cairn has 4,757. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and Cairn free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and Cairn is licensed under AGPL-3.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and Cairn?
Dify is written in Python and Cairn in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Dify or Cairn?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (160,251 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Cairn if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.