head to head · open source
Khoj vs Zotero
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars, 2,529 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. Zotero has 15,838 stars, 1,173 forks, 1,600 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Khoj leads on adoption by 140% (37,946 vs 15,838 stars). Khoj is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; Zotero is written in JavaScript under a custom or non-standard licence. Khoj has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Zotero 7%. Zotero 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
| Khoj | Zotero | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 16K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Custom / other |
| Written in | Python | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-08-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 1.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Khoj if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Zotero if
- You want the Zotero feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and Zotero fits your workflow better
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…
About Zotero
Zotero ====== Zotero is a free, easy to use tool to help you collect, organize, cite, and share your research sources. Please post feature requests or bug reports to the Zotero Forums. If you're having trouble with Zotero, see Getting Help. For more information on how to use this source code, see the Zotero documentation.
read the full Zotero overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Khoj or Zotero more popular?
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars and Zotero has 15,838. Khoj has the larger community by that measure.
Are Khoj and Zotero free?
Both are open source. Khoj is licensed under AGPL-3.0, and Zotero has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Khoj and Zotero?
Khoj is written in Python and Zotero in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Khoj or Zotero?
Choose Khoj if you want the larger community (37,946 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Zotero if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.