head to head · open source
Dify vs ruoyi-ai
Dify has 156,215 GitHub stars, 24,668 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped today. ruoyi-ai has 5,705 stars, 1,406 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Dify leads on adoption by 2,638% (156,215 vs 5,705 stars). Dify is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; ruoyi-ai is written in Java under MIT. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, ruoyi-ai 25%. Dify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agent, 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 | ruoyi-ai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 156K | ★ 5.7K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 1.4K |
| 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 ruoyi-ai if
- You want the ruoyi-ai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and ruoyi-ai 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 ruoyi-ai
RuoYi AI is an MIT licensed, Java based enterprise AI development framework for building AI agents, aimed at developers and platform teams that need multi provider LLM management, private knowledge bases, visual workflow orchestration and multi agent coordination in a single self hostable stack.
read the full ruoyi-ai overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or ruoyi-ai more popular?
Dify has 156,215 GitHub stars and ruoyi-ai has 5,705. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and ruoyi-ai free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and ruoyi-ai is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and ruoyi-ai?
Dify is written in TypeScript and ruoyi-ai in Java. 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 ruoyi-ai?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (156,215 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose ruoyi-ai if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.