head to head · open source
LobeChat vs ChatUI
LobeChat has 82,576 GitHub stars, 15,895 forks, 922 open issues and last shipped today. ChatUI has 4,448 stars, 426 forks, 53 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. LobeChat leads on adoption by 1,756% (82,576 vs 4,448 stars). LobeChat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; ChatUI is written in TypeScript under MIT. LobeChat has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, ChatUI 10%. LobeChat 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
| LobeChat | ChatUI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 83K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-03-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 426 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LobeChat if
- You weight community size — 83K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ChatUI if
- You want the ChatUI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and ChatUI fits your workflow better
About LobeChat
LobeHub is an open source platform for managing, building, and operating AI agent teams. It functions as a Chief Agent Operator (CAO), enabling users to organize, schedule, and monitor autonomous AI agents around the clock. The project lives in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, integrating with major LLM providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepSeek, and Alibaba’s GLM series.
read the full LobeChat overview →
About ChatUI
ChatUI is an MIT licensed UI design language and React component library for conversational interfaces, published on npm as @chatui/core and aimed at front end teams that need a ready chat surface instead of hand built message components.
read the full ChatUI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LobeChat or ChatUI more popular?
LobeChat has 82,576 GitHub stars and ChatUI has 4,448. LobeChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LobeChat and ChatUI free?
Both are open source. LobeChat has no licence declared in this registry, and ChatUI is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LobeChat and ChatUI?
LobeChat is written in TypeScript and ChatUI in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, LobeChat or ChatUI?
Choose LobeChat if you want the larger community (82,576 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose ChatUI if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.