head to head · open source
langchain vs contextgem
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. contextgem has 2,047 stars, 187 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. langchain leads on adoption by 7,174% (148,892 vs 2,047 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; contextgem is written in Python under Apache-2.0. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, contextgem 9%. langchain was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, generative-ai), 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
| langchain | contextgem | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 187 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick langchain if
- You weight community size — 149K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick contextgem if
- You want the contextgem 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 contextgem fits your workflow better
About langchain
The agent engineering platform. LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third party integrations to simplify AI application development — all while future proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves. [!TIP] Just getting started? Check out Deep Agents — a higher level package built on LangChain for agents that have built in capabilities for common usage patterns such as planning, subagents, file system usage, and more. Quickstart If you're looking for more advanced customization or agent orchestration, check…
read the full langchain overview →
About contextgem
ContextGem: Effortless LLM extraction from documents ContextGem is a free, open source LLM framework that makes it radically easier to extract structured data and insights from documents — with minimal code. 💎 Why ContextGem? Reliable structured extraction from documents typically involves writing extraction prompts, designing validation models, mapping outputs back to source references, orchestrating multi step pipelines, and tracking usage across LLMs. ContextGem handles all of this through powerful abstractions — you describe what to extract in natural language, and the framework handles how . The result…
read the full contextgem overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is langchain or contextgem more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and contextgem has 2,047. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and contextgem free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and contextgem under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and contextgem?
langchain is written in Python and contextgem 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, langchain or contextgem?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose contextgem if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.