head to head · open source
ragflow vs headroom
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars, 10,759 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. headroom has 72,745 stars, 5,589 forks, 643 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow leads on adoption by 25% (90,889 vs 72,745 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; headroom is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, headroom 8%. 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, context-engineering), 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
| ragflow | headroom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 73K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 5.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ragflow if
- You weight community size — 91K 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 headroom if
- You want the headroom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and headroom fits your workflow better
About ragflow
RAGFlow is an open source Retrieval Augmented Generation engine that fuses RAG with agent capabilities into a context layer for large language models, built for developers and teams that need to turn complex, unstructured documents into production AI systems.
read the full ragflow overview →
About headroom
Headroom is an Apache 2.0 Python library, local proxy, agent wrapper and MCP server that compresses tool outputs, logs, files, RAG chunks and conversation history before they reach an LLM, and it is built for developers running AI coding agents or LLM applications who want to cut token usage without changing the answers they get.
read the full headroom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or headroom more popular?
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars and headroom has 72,745. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and headroom free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and headroom under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and headroom?
ragflow is written in Go and headroom 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, ragflow or headroom?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (90,889 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose headroom if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.