head to head · open source
LobeChat vs waku-agent
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars, 15,891 forks, 922 open issues and last shipped yesterday. waku-agent has 1,776 stars, 353 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LobeChat leads on adoption by 4,548% (82,547 vs 1,776 stars). LobeChat is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; waku-agent is written in Python under MIT. LobeChat has attracted 19% as many forks as stars, waku-agent 20%. LobeChat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (claude), 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 | waku-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 83K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | Custom / other | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 16K | ⑂ 353 |
| 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 waku-agent if
- You want the waku-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and waku-agent 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 waku-agent
waku agent is a local first, MIT licensed Python AI agent harness for developers who want an assistant whose loop, memory and evaluation code they can read and own, rather than a hosted assistant that keeps those parts out of sight.
read the full waku-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LobeChat or waku-agent more popular?
LobeChat has 82,547 GitHub stars and waku-agent has 1,776. LobeChat has the larger community by that measure.
Are LobeChat and waku-agent free?
Both are open source. LobeChat has no licence declared in this registry, and waku-agent is licensed under MIT. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between LobeChat and waku-agent?
LobeChat is written in TypeScript and waku-agent 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, LobeChat or waku-agent?
Choose LobeChat if you want the larger community (82,547 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose waku-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.