head to head · open source
Chatwoot vs goflylivechat
Chatwoot has 37,381 GitHub stars, 9,096 forks, 1,377 open issues and last shipped today. goflylivechat has 2,591 stars, 729 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. Chatwoot leads on adoption by 1,343% (37,381 vs 2,591 stars). Chatwoot is written in Ruby under a custom or non-standard licence; goflylivechat is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Chatwoot has attracted 24% as many forks as stars, goflylivechat 28%. Chatwoot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (customer-support, livechat), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Chatwoot | goflylivechat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 37K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2025-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 9.1K | ⑂ 729 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Chatwoot if
- You weight community size — 37K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick goflylivechat if
- You want the goflylivechat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and goflylivechat fits your workflow better
About Chatwoot
Chatwoot is a Ruby based, open source, self hosted customer support platform that consolidates live chat, email, and social messaging into one omnichannel inbox, positioned as an open alternative to Intercom, Twilio, Zendesk, and Salesforce Service Cloud.
read the full Chatwoot overview →
About goflylivechat
GOFLY LIVE CHAT is an open source live chat support system written in Go for self hosted customer service workloads. It belongs to the Go web application ecosystem and targets private cloud deployments where an organization runs its own messaging backend, database, and web frontend instead of relying on a hosted support platform.
read the full goflylivechat overview →
More in Business Software
Related comparisons
More Customer Support & Success projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Customer Support & Success field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Chatwoot or goflylivechat more popular?
Chatwoot has 37,381 GitHub stars and goflylivechat has 2,591. Chatwoot has the larger community by that measure.
Are Chatwoot and goflylivechat free?
Both are open source. Chatwoot has no licence declared in this registry, and goflylivechat is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Chatwoot and goflylivechat?
Chatwoot is written in Ruby and goflylivechat in HTML. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Chatwoot or goflylivechat?
Choose Chatwoot if you want the larger community (37,381 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose goflylivechat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.