head to head · open source
Dify vs loop-engineering
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars, 24,658 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. loop-engineering has 11,237 stars, 1,510 forks, 9 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dify leads on adoption by 1,290% (156,167 vs 11,237 stars). Dify is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; loop-engineering is written in TypeScript under MIT. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, loop-engineering 13%. Dify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agentic-ai, automation, claude), 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 | loop-engineering | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 156K | ★ 11K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 1.5K |
| 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 loop-engineering if
- You want the loop-engineering feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and loop-engineering 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 loop-engineering
loop engineering is an MIT licensed TypeScript pattern library, starter collection, and CLI for developers and platform teams who want to design loops that discover work, hand it to AI coding agents, verify the results, and persist state instead of typing the next prompt themselves.
read the full loop-engineering overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or loop-engineering more popular?
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars and loop-engineering has 11,237. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and loop-engineering free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and loop-engineering is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and loop-engineering?
Dify is written in TypeScript and loop-engineering 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, Dify or loop-engineering?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (156,167 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose loop-engineering if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.