head to head · open source
docetl vs OpenContracts
docetl has 4,195 GitHub stars, 463 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. OpenContracts has 1,534 stars, 199 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. docetl leads on adoption by 173% (4,195 vs 1,534 stars). docetl is written in Python under MIT; OpenContracts is written in Python under MIT. docetl has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, OpenContracts 13%. OpenContracts was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (etl, llm, unstructured-data), 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
| docetl | OpenContracts | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.2K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 463 | ⑂ 199 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick docetl if
- You weight community size — 4.2K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenContracts if
- You want the OpenContracts feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and OpenContracts fits your workflow better
About docetl
DocETL: Declarative & Agentic Map Reduce What is DocETL · Install · Python API · YAML · DocWrangler UI · Docs What is DocETL DocETL helps you process large collections of data (structured and unstructured) with LLMs. You write each operation in natural language, e.g., "pull out every complaint in this ticket," and DocETL provides the operators you need (map, reduce, filter, and more) and orchestrates them, parallelizing work across your data, optimizes your pipeline automatically, swapping models, rewriting prompts, decomposing operations, and replacing subtasks with code wherever possible, to raise accuracy and…
read the full docetl overview →
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts (Demo) Open source document intelligence you can build on. Point OpenContracts at a repository of documents and get a programmable citation graph — human annotation, structured extraction, AI agents, and a built in MCP server, all behind one API. Self hosted, MIT licensed, and built for teams working at scale. Same graph, three surfaces: a GraphQL + REST API for your apps, a Model Context Protocol server for your agents, and a React UI for your team. From documents to a citation graph — in about a minute Create a corpus, drop in your documents, and click Set up . That one click installs the…
read the full OpenContracts overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is docetl or OpenContracts more popular?
docetl has 4,195 GitHub stars and OpenContracts has 1,534. docetl has the larger community by that measure.
Are docetl and OpenContracts free?
Both are open source. docetl is licensed under MIT and OpenContracts under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between docetl and OpenContracts?
docetl is written in Python and OpenContracts 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, docetl or OpenContracts?
Choose docetl if you want the larger community (4,195 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenContracts if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.