head to head · open source
Dify vs Codewhale
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars, 24,658 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Codewhale has 40,995 stars, 3,564 forks, 110 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dify leads on adoption by 281% (156,167 vs 40,995 stars). Dify is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Codewhale is written in Rust under MIT. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, Codewhale 9%. Codewhale 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
| Dify | Codewhale | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 156K | ★ 41K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 3.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Dify if
- You weight community size — 156K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Codewhale if
- You want the Codewhale feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Codewhale fits your workflow better
About Dify
Dify is an open source LLM application development platform built in TypeScript. It provides a visual interface for designing, testing, and deploying AI workflows, RAG pipelines, and agentic systems without writing extensive code. The platform lives in the generative AI development ecosystem and targets teams needing to move from prototype to production using consistent tooling across environments.
About Codewhale
Codewhale is an open source coding agent that runs in the terminal, written in Rust and released under the MIT license. It reads a project, edits files, runs commands, and checks its own work against a goal, using either a hosted model or a local model that the user chooses and connects. The project is developed in the open on GitHub, where it has gathered roughly 41,000 stars and 3,500 forks, with the repository sitting at about one year old and 110 open issues. It lives in the AI development tooling ecosystem, specifically the growing class of terminal based coding agents, and it is distributed both as a CLI bi…
read the full Codewhale overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or Codewhale more popular?
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars and Codewhale has 40,995. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and Codewhale free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and Codewhale is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and Codewhale?
Dify is written in TypeScript and Codewhale in Rust. 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 Codewhale?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (156,167 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Codewhale if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.