head to head · open source
PaddleOCR vs LightRAG
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars, 11,360 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. LightRAG has 39,738 stars, 5,589 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PaddleOCR leads on adoption by 126% (89,745 vs 39,738 stars). PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0; LightRAG is written in Python under MIT. PaddleOCR has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, LightRAG 14%. LightRAG 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
| PaddleOCR | LightRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 40K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 5.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PaddleOCR if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick LightRAG if
- You want the LightRAG feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and LightRAG fits your workflow better
About PaddleOCR
PaddleOCR is an Apache 2.0 Python OCR and document AI toolkit that converts PDFs and images into structured, LLM ready JSON or Markdown across more than 100 languages, and it is built for developers who need to feed documents into RAG pipelines, agents, and document parsing services.
read the full PaddleOCR overview →
About LightRAG
LightRAG is a Python retrieval augmented generation framework, released under the MIT licence and presented in an EMNLP 2025 paper, that builds a knowledge graph over documents so that queries can be answered from both graph structure and vector similarity.
read the full LightRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PaddleOCR or LightRAG more popular?
PaddleOCR has 89,745 GitHub stars and LightRAG has 39,738. PaddleOCR has the larger community by that measure.
Are PaddleOCR and LightRAG free?
Both are open source. PaddleOCR is licensed under Apache-2.0 and LightRAG under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PaddleOCR and LightRAG?
PaddleOCR is written in Python and LightRAG 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, PaddleOCR or LightRAG?
Choose PaddleOCR if you want the larger community (89,745 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose LightRAG if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.