head to head · open source
ComfyUI vs kotaemon
ComfyUI has 144,907 GitHub stars, 17,244 forks, 4,894 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,856 stars, 2,164 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. ComfyUI leads on adoption by 460% (144,907 vs 25,856 stars). ComfyUI is written in Python under GPL-3.0; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ComfyUI has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. ComfyUI 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
| ComfyUI | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 145K | ★ 26K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 17K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ComfyUI if
- You weight community size — 145K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- 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 ComfyUI
ComfyUI The most powerful and modular AI engine for content creation. [![Website][website shield]][website url] [![Dynamic JSON Badge][discord shield]][discord url] [![Twitter][twitter shield]][twitter url] [![Matrix][matrix shield]][matrix url] [![][github release shield]][github release link] [![][github release date shield]][github release link] [![][github downloads shield]][github downloads link] [![][github downloads latest shield]][github downloads link] [matrix shield]: [matrix url]: [website shield]: [website url]: [discord shield]: [discord url]: [twitter shield]: [twitter url]: [github release…
read the full ComfyUI overview →
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 ComfyUI or kotaemon more popular?
ComfyUI has 144,907 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,856. ComfyUI has the larger community by that measure.
Are ComfyUI and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. ComfyUI is licensed under GPL-3.0 and kotaemon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ComfyUI and kotaemon?
ComfyUI is written in Python 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, ComfyUI or kotaemon?
Choose ComfyUI if you want the larger community (144,907 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.