head to head · open source
Jellyfin vs parlant
Jellyfin has 57,244 GitHub stars, 5,523 forks, 684 open issues and last shipped yesterday. parlant has 18,290 stars, 1,555 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Jellyfin leads on adoption by 213% (57,244 vs 18,290 stars). Jellyfin is written in C# under GPL-2.0; parlant is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Jellyfin has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, parlant 9%. Jellyfin was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (hacktoberfest), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Jellyfin | parlant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 57K | ★ 18K |
| License | GPL-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | C# | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.5K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Jellyfin if
- You weight community size — 57K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C#
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick parlant if
- You want the parlant 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 parlant fits your workflow better
About Jellyfin
Jellyfin is a free and open source media server that lets an individual or an organisation manage and stream their own movies, music, and other media from a dedicated server to end user devices through multiple client apps.
read the full Jellyfin overview →
About parlant
Parlant is a Python project licensed under Apache 2.0, and it presents itself as an interaction control harness for customer facing AI agents. It lives in the open source large language model ecosystem, with topic tags for ai agents, llm, openai, gemini, llama3, genai, python, customer service, customer success, and ai alignment. The README describes a server based Python SDK for creating agents, observations, and guidelines.
read the full parlant overview →
More in Miscellaneous
Related comparisons
More Media & Streaming projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Media & Streaming field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Jellyfin or parlant more popular?
Jellyfin has 57,244 GitHub stars and parlant has 18,290. Jellyfin has the larger community by that measure.
Are Jellyfin and parlant free?
Both are open source. Jellyfin is licensed under GPL-2.0 and parlant under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Jellyfin and parlant?
Jellyfin is written in C# and parlant 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, Jellyfin or parlant?
Choose Jellyfin if you want the larger community (57,244 stars) or its GPL-2.0 licence terms. Choose parlant if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.