head to head · open source
SiYuan vs Khoj
SiYuan has 47,039 GitHub stars, 3,095 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Khoj has 37,946 stars, 2,529 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. SiYuan leads on adoption by 24% (47,039 vs 37,946 stars). SiYuan is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; Khoj is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. SiYuan has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Khoj 7%. SiYuan 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
| SiYuan | Khoj | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 47K | ★ 38K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 2.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick SiYuan if
- You weight community size — 47K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Khoj if
- You want the Khoj feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Khoj fits your workflow better
About SiYuan
From thought to insight, with agents English 中文 日本語 Türkçe Table of Contents 💡 Introduction 🔮 Features 🏗️ Architecture and Ecosystem 🗺️ Roadmap 🚀 Download Setup App Market Installation Package Package Manager Docker Hosting Unraid Hosting TrueNAS Hosting Test Channels ⌨️ Command line Interface 🏘️ Community 🛠️ Development Guide ❓ FAQ How does SiYuan store data? Does it support data synchronization through a third party sync disk? Is SiYuan open source? How to upgrade to a new version? What if some blocks (such as paragraph blocks in list items) cannot find the block icon? What should I do if the data repo…
read the full SiYuan overview →
About Khoj
Your AI second brain 📑 Docs • 🌐 Web • 🔥 App • 💬 Discord • ✍🏽 Blog 🎁 New Meet 🌶️ Pipali our open source AI coworker that runs on your computer. Read about Khoj's excellent performance on modern retrieval and reasoning benchmarks. Overview Khoj is a personal AI app to extend your capabilities. It smoothly scales up from an on device personal AI to a cloud scale enterprise AI. Chat with any local or online LLM (e.g llama3, qwen, gemma, mistral, gpt, claude, gemini, deepseek). Get answers from the internet and your docs (including image, pdf, markdown, org mode, word, notion files). Access it from your…
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Frequently asked questions
Is SiYuan or Khoj more popular?
SiYuan has 47,039 GitHub stars and Khoj has 37,946. SiYuan has the larger community by that measure.
Are SiYuan and Khoj free?
Both are open source. SiYuan is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and Khoj under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between SiYuan and Khoj?
SiYuan is written in TypeScript and Khoj 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, SiYuan or Khoj?
Choose SiYuan if you want the larger community (47,039 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Khoj if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.