head to head · open source
nanobot vs kotaemon
nanobot has 48,274 GitHub stars, 8,533 forks, 775 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,769 stars, 2,156 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. nanobot leads on adoption by 87% (48,274 vs 25,769 stars). nanobot is written in Python under MIT; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. nanobot has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. nanobot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (chatbot, llms), 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
| nanobot | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.5K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nanobot if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the MIT 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 nanobot
nanobot is an ultra lightweight, open source, self hosted personal AI agent framework written in Python, aimed at individual developers and small teams who want to run their own agent through a browser WebUI, a terminal, or chat apps instead of renting a hosted assistant.
read the full nanobot overview →
About kotaemon
kotaemon is an open source, Apache 2.0 licensed Python project that provides a clean and customizable retrieval augmented generation (RAG) UI for chatting with documents. It sits in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically under AI interaction and interfaces, and is built on Gradio so that the interface itself can be extended or modified. The README frames the project as serving two distinct audiences at once: end users who want to do question answering over their own files, and developers who want to build their own RAG pipeline on top of the framework.
read the full kotaemon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nanobot or kotaemon more popular?
nanobot has 48,274 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,769. nanobot has the larger community by that measure.
Are nanobot and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. nanobot is licensed under MIT and kotaemon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nanobot and kotaemon?
nanobot 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, nanobot or kotaemon?
Choose nanobot if you want the larger community (48,274 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.