head to head · open source
Jan vs kotaemon
Jan has 45,270 GitHub stars, 3,130 forks, 521 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,847 stars, 2,164 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Jan leads on adoption by 75% (45,270 vs 25,847 stars). Jan is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Jan has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. Jan was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (open-source), 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
| Jan | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 45K | ★ 26K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Jan if
- You weight community size — 45K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kotaemon if
- You want the kotaemon 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 kotaemon fits your workflow better
About Jan
Jan Open source ChatGPT replacement English · 中文 · 日本語 Getting Started Community Changelog Bug reports Jan is bringing the best of open source AI in an easy to use product. Download and run LLMs with full control and privacy . Installation The easiest way to get started is by downloading one of the following versions for your respective operating system: Platform Download Windows jan.exe macOS jan.dmg Linux (deb) jan.deb Linux (AppImage) jan.AppImage Linux (Arm64) How to Download from jan.ai or GitHub Releases. Features Local AI Models : Download and run LLMs (Llama, Gemma, Qwen, GPT oss etc.) from HuggingFace…
About kotaemon
kotaemon An open source clean & customizable RAG UI for chatting with your documents. Built with both end users and developers in mind. Live Demo 1 Live Demo 2 Online Install Colab Notebook (Local RAG) User Guide Developer Guide Feedback Contact Introduction This project serves as a functional RAG UI for both end users who want to do QA on their documents and developers who want to build their own RAG pipeline. For end users Clean & Minimalistic UI : A user friendly interface for RAG based QA. Support for Various LLMs : Compatible with LLM API providers (OpenAI, AzureOpenAI, Cohere, etc.) and local LLMs (via…
read the full kotaemon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Jan or kotaemon more popular?
Jan has 45,270 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,847. Jan has the larger community by that measure.
Are Jan and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. Jan has no licence declared in this registry, and kotaemon is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Jan and kotaemon?
Jan is written in Rust and kotaemon 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, Jan or kotaemon?
Choose Jan if you want the larger community (45,270 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.