head to head · open source
Dify vs LightRAG
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars, 24,658 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LightRAG has 39,726 stars, 5,591 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dify leads on adoption by 293% (156,167 vs 39,726 stars). Dify is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; LightRAG is written in Python under MIT. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, LightRAG 14%. LightRAG was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (genai, gpt, 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 | LightRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 156K | ★ 40K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 5.6K |
| 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 LightRAG if
- You want the LightRAG feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and LightRAG 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 LightRAG
LightRAG is a Python retrieval augmented generation framework, released under the MIT licence and presented in an EMNLP 2025 paper, that builds a knowledge graph over documents so that queries can be answered from both graph structure and vector similarity.
read the full LightRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or LightRAG more popular?
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars and LightRAG has 39,726. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and LightRAG free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and LightRAG is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and LightRAG?
Dify is written in TypeScript and LightRAG 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 LightRAG?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (156,167 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose LightRAG if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.