head to head · open source
LobeChat vs sponge
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars, 15,891 forks, 922 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sponge has 2,867 stars, 271 forks, 42 open issues and last shipped 9 months ago. LobeChat leads on adoption by 2,779% (82,547 vs 2,867 stars). LobeChat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; sponge is written in Go under MIT. LobeChat has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, sponge 9%. 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.
← all 8884 open source comparisons
Side by side
| LobeChat | sponge | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 83K | ★ 2.9K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2025-12-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 271 |
| 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 sponge if
- You want the sponge feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and sponge 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 sponge
Sponge is a Go development framework for building backend services through code generation. It lives in the Go ecosystem and integrates Gin, gRPC, GORM, and Protobuf. The project parses definitions written in SQL, Protobuf, or JSON configuration files into modular service code.
read the full sponge 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 sponge more popular?
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars and sponge has 2,867. LobeChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LobeChat and sponge free?
Both are open source. LobeChat has no licence declared in this registry, and sponge is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LobeChat and sponge?
LobeChat is written in TypeScript and sponge in Go. 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 sponge?
Choose LobeChat if you want the larger community (82,547 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose sponge if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.