head to head · open source
caveman vs Grok Build
caveman has 116,900 GitHub stars, 6,789 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Grok Build has 27,659 stars, 5,229 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. caveman leads on adoption by 323% (116,900 vs 27,659 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Grok Build is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, Grok Build 19%. caveman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| caveman | Grok Build | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 117K | ★ 28K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.8K | ⑂ 5.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caveman if
- You weight community size — 117K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Grok Build if
- You want the Grok Build feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Grok Build fits your workflow better
About caveman
why use many token when few do trick Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop. ▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works" 🏆 1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026 · 🥇 1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026 1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments · 8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN , an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3× · 🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality" ⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills…
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About Grok Build
Grok Build ( grok ) Grok Build is SpaceXAI's terminal based AI coding agent. It runs as a full screen TUI that understands your codebase, edits files, executes shell commands, searches the web, and manages long running tasks — interactively, headlessly for scripting/CI, or embedded in editors via the Agent Client Protocol (ACP). Installing the released binary · Building from source · Documentation · Repository layout · Development · Contributing · License Learn more about Grok Build at x.ai/cli This repository contains the Rust source for the grok CLI/TUI and its agent runtime. It is synced periodically from the…
read the full Grok Build overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or Grok Build more popular?
caveman has 116,900 GitHub stars and Grok Build has 27,659. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and Grok Build free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Grok Build under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and Grok Build?
caveman is written in Go and Grok Build in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, caveman or Grok Build?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (116,900 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Grok Build if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.