head to head · open source
headroom vs promptflow
headroom has 78,845 GitHub stars, 6,162 forks, 643 open issues and last shipped yesterday. promptflow has 11,260 stars, 1,127 forks, 69 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. headroom leads on adoption by 600% (78,845 vs 11,260 stars). headroom is written in Python under Apache-2.0; promptflow is written in Python under MIT. headroom has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, promptflow 10%. headroom was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, llm), 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
| headroom | promptflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 79K | ★ 11K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.2K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick headroom if
- You weight community size — 79K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick promptflow if
- You want the promptflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and promptflow fits your workflow better
About headroom
Quickstart · Install · Proof · Agents · Docs · Discord · llms.txt AI agents / LLMs: read /llms.txt here, or fetch the live index · full docs blob . Headroom compresses everything your AI agent reads — tool outputs, logs, RAG chunks, files, and conversation history — before it reaches the LLM. Same answers, fraction of the tokens. Compression runs on your machine; no prompt or file content is sent anywhere to be compressed. 10,144 → 1,260 tokens. The same FATAL found. What it does Library — compress(messages) in Python or TypeScript, inline in any app. Proxy — headroom proxy port 8787 , zero code changes, any…
read the full headroom overview →
About promptflow
Prompt flow Welcome to join us to make prompt flow better by participating discussions, opening issues, submitting PRs. Prompt flow is a suite of development tools designed to streamline the end to end development cycle of LLM based AI applications, from ideation, prototyping, testing, evaluation to production deployment and monitoring. It makes prompt engineering much easier and enables you to build LLM apps with production quality. With prompt flow, you will be able to: Create and iteratively develop flow Create executable flows that link LLMs, prompts, Python code and other tools together. Debug and iterate…
read the full promptflow overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is headroom or promptflow more popular?
headroom has 78,845 GitHub stars and promptflow has 11,260. headroom has the larger community by that measure.
Are headroom and promptflow free?
Both are open source. headroom is licensed under Apache-2.0 and promptflow under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between headroom and promptflow?
headroom is written in Python and promptflow 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, headroom or promptflow?
Choose headroom if you want the larger community (78,845 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose promptflow if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.