head to head · open source
LightRAG vs PixelRAG
LightRAG has 40,517 GitHub stars, 5,758 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. PixelRAG has 10,848 stars, 981 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. LightRAG leads on adoption by 273% (40,517 vs 10,848 stars). LightRAG is written in Python under MIT; PixelRAG is written in Python under Apache-2.0. LightRAG has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, PixelRAG 9%. LightRAG was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (rag), 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
| LightRAG | PixelRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 11K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.8K | ⑂ 981 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LightRAG if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick PixelRAG if
- You want the PixelRAG 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 PixelRAG fits your workflow better
About LightRAG
🚀 LightRAG: Simple and Fast Retrieval Augmented Generation 🎉 News [2026.07]🎯[New Feature]: Add Smart Heading recognition feature for word documents. [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Merge RagAnything into LightRAG 🎉. Multimodal content parsing and extraction via MinerU / Docling services. [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Introducing four selectable text chunking strategies: Fix , Recursive , Vector , and Paragraph . [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Role specific LLM configuration support, 4 distinct roles: EXTRACT, QUERY, KEYWORDS, and VLM, with independent LLM settings. [2026.03]🎯[New Feature]: Integrated OpenSearch as a…
read the full LightRAG overview →
About PixelRAG
Official codebase for PIXELRAG: Web Screenshots Beat Text for Retrieval Augmented Generation Yichuan Wang , Zhifei Li , Zirui Wang , Paul Teiletche , Lesheng Jin Matei Zaharia †, Joseph E. Gonzalez †, Sewon Min † Equal contribution † Equal advising Work done at Berkeley SkyLab & BAIR & Berkeley NLP Search any document by how it looks , not just the text it contains. What it is · Give Claude eyes · How it works · Pipelines The two core operations — render a page to screenshots, search a visual index: Live, hosted endpoint — serves a pre built index of 8.28M Wikipedia pages . No setup, no API…
read the full PixelRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LightRAG or PixelRAG more popular?
LightRAG has 40,517 GitHub stars and PixelRAG has 10,848. LightRAG has the larger community by that measure.
Are LightRAG and PixelRAG free?
Both are open source. LightRAG is licensed under MIT and PixelRAG under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LightRAG and PixelRAG?
LightRAG is written in Python and PixelRAG 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, LightRAG or PixelRAG?
Choose LightRAG if you want the larger community (40,517 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PixelRAG if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.