head to head · open source
LightRAG vs PixelRAG
LightRAG has 39,770 GitHub stars, 5,599 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped today. PixelRAG has 10,029 stars, 863 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 6 days ago. LightRAG leads on adoption by 297% (39,770 vs 10,029 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 | ★ 40K | ★ 10K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 863 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LightRAG if
- You weight community size — 40K 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 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 →
About PixelRAG
PixelRAG is the official open source codebase for the paper "PIXELRAG: Web Screenshots Beat Text for Retrieval Augmented Generation," an Apache 2.0 Python project from Berkeley SkyLab, BAIR and Berkeley NLP that renders web pages, PDFs and images to screenshot tiles and retrieves over those images instead of parsed text, built for RAG engineers, agent developers and researchers who need tables, charts, diagrams and layout to survive retrieval.
read the full PixelRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LightRAG or PixelRAG more popular?
LightRAG has 39,770 GitHub stars and PixelRAG has 10,029. 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 (39,770 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PixelRAG if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.