head to head · open source
Khoj vs mindforger
Khoj has 37,970 GitHub stars, 2,530 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. mindforger has 2,724 stars, 173 forks, 625 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Khoj leads on adoption by 1,294% (37,970 vs 2,724 stars). Khoj is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; mindforger is written in C++ under GPL-2.0. Khoj has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, mindforger 6%. mindforger 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
| Khoj | mindforger | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | C++ |
| Last push | 2026-08-02 | 2026-10-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 173 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Khoj if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mindforger if
- You want the mindforger feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C++
- You evaluated both and mindforger fits your workflow better
About Khoj
Your AI second brain 📑 Docs • 🌐 Web • 🔥 App • 💬 Discord • ✍🏽 Blog 🎁 New Meet 🌶️ Pipali our open source AI coworker that runs on your computer. Read about Khoj's excellent performance on modern retrieval and reasoning benchmarks. Overview Khoj is a personal AI app to extend your capabilities. It smoothly scales up from an on device personal AI to a cloud scale enterprise AI. Chat with any local or online LLM (e.g llama3, qwen, gemma, mistral, gpt, claude, gemini, deepseek). Get answers from the internet and your docs (including image, pdf, markdown, org mode, word, notion files). Access it from your…
About mindforger
Thinking Notebook & Markdown Editor Are you drowning in information , but starving for knowledge ? Where do you keep your private remarks like ideas, personal plans, gift tips, how tos, dreams, business vision, finance strategy, auto coaching notes? Loads of documents, sketches and remarks spread around the file system, cloud, web and Post it notes? Are you afraid of your knowledge privacy ? Are you able to find them once you create them? Do you know how are they mutually related when you read or write them? No? Thinking Notebook MindForger is human mind inspired personal knowledge management tool. Markdown…
read the full mindforger overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Khoj or mindforger more popular?
Khoj has 37,970 GitHub stars and mindforger has 2,724. Khoj has the larger community by that measure.
Are Khoj and mindforger free?
Both are open source. Khoj is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mindforger under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Khoj and mindforger?
Khoj is written in Python and mindforger in C++. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Khoj or mindforger?
Choose Khoj if you want the larger community (37,970 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mindforger if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.