head to head · open source
Dify vs ragflow
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars, 24,658 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow has 90,889 stars, 10,759 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dify leads on adoption by 72% (156,167 vs 90,889 stars). Dify is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, ragflow 12%. Dify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agentic-ai, ai), 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 | ragflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 156K | ★ 91K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 11K |
| 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 ragflow if
- You want the ragflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ragflow 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 ragflow
RAGFlow is an open source Retrieval Augmented Generation engine that fuses RAG with agent capabilities into a context layer for large language models, built for developers and teams that need to turn complex, unstructured documents into production AI systems.
read the full ragflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or ragflow more popular?
Dify has 156,167 GitHub stars and ragflow has 90,889. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and ragflow free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and ragflow?
Dify is written in TypeScript and ragflow in Go. 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 ragflow?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (156,167 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose ragflow if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.