head to head · open source
LobeChat vs Sidekick
LobeChat has 82,576 GitHub stars, 15,895 forks, 922 open issues and last shipped today. Sidekick has 3,312 stars, 148 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. LobeChat leads on adoption by 2,393% (82,576 vs 3,312 stars). LobeChat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; Sidekick is written in Swift under MIT. LobeChat has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, Sidekick 4%. LobeChat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, deepseek), 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| LobeChat | Sidekick | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 83K | ★ 3.3K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-05-24 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 148 |
| 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 Sidekick if
- You want the Sidekick feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and Sidekick 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 Sidekick
Sidekick Chat with a local LLM that can respond with information from your files, folders and websites on your Mac without installing any other software. All conversations happen offline, and your data stays secure. Sidekick is a local first application –– with a built in inference engine for local models, while accommodating OpenAI compatible APIs for additional model options. Sidekick supports modern GGUF local models such as Qwen3.5 out of the box through its built in llama.cpp backend. Example Use Let’s say you're collecting evidence for a History paper about interactions between Aztecs and Spanish troops, an…
read the full Sidekick overview →
More in AI & Machine Learning
Related comparisons
More AI Interaction & Interfaces projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Interaction & Interfaces field.
Frequently asked questions
Is LobeChat or Sidekick more popular?
LobeChat has 82,576 GitHub stars and Sidekick has 3,312. LobeChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LobeChat and Sidekick free?
Both are open source. LobeChat has no licence declared in this registry, and Sidekick is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LobeChat and Sidekick?
LobeChat is written in TypeScript and Sidekick in Swift. 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 Sidekick?
Choose LobeChat if you want the larger community (82,576 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose Sidekick if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.