head to head · open source
LobeChat vs sim
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars, 15,891 forks, 922 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sim has 29,655 stars, 3,837 forks, 336 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LobeChat leads on adoption by 178% (82,547 vs 29,655 stars). LobeChat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; sim is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. LobeChat has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, sim 13%. sim was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, deepseek, gemini), 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
| LobeChat | sim | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 83K | ★ 30K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 3.8K |
| 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 sim if
- You want the sim feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and sim 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 sim
Sim is an open source collaborative workspace for building, deploying, and monitoring AI agents and workflows. It lives in the TypeScript ecosystem and is distributed under the Apache 2.0 license, with a repository that has accumulated roughly 29,600 stars and 3,800 forks over its two year history. The project positions itself as a single surface where chat, workflows, tables, files, and knowledge coexist, whether accessed through a browser or a desktop application for macOS.
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Frequently asked questions
Is LobeChat or sim more popular?
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars and sim has 29,655. LobeChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LobeChat and sim free?
Both are open source. LobeChat has no licence declared in this registry, and sim is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LobeChat and sim?
LobeChat is written in TypeScript and sim 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 sim?
Choose LobeChat if you want the larger community (82,547 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose sim if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.