head to head · open source
Zammad vs goflylivechat
Zammad has 5,971 GitHub stars, 1,069 forks, 451 open issues and last shipped yesterday. goflylivechat has 2,591 stars, 729 forks, 39 open issues and last shipped 1.1 years ago. Zammad leads on adoption by 130% (5,971 vs 2,591 stars). Zammad is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; goflylivechat is written in HTML under Apache-2.0. Zammad has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, goflylivechat 28%. Zammad was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (customer-support), 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
| Zammad | goflylivechat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.0K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2025-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 729 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zammad if
- You weight community size — 6.0K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 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 Zammad
Zammad is a web based, open source helpdesk and customer support platform, released under the GNU AGPLv3 and written primarily in Ruby on the Rails framework. The source code lives on GitHub and is owned by the Zammad Foundation, an entity that the README describes as independent of commercial providers such as Zammad GmbH. Development is carried out by the team at Zammad GmbH together with the community, and the project states that the software is and will stay open source.
read the full Zammad 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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zammad or goflylivechat more popular?
Zammad has 5,971 GitHub stars and goflylivechat has 2,591. Zammad has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zammad and goflylivechat free?
Both are open source. Zammad is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and goflylivechat under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zammad and goflylivechat?
Zammad 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, Zammad or goflylivechat?
Choose Zammad if you want the larger community (5,971 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose goflylivechat if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.