head to head · open source
nanobot vs botman
nanobot has 48,372 GitHub stars, 8,548 forks, 775 open issues and last shipped today. botman has 6,160 stars, 812 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. nanobot leads on adoption by 685% (48,372 vs 6,160 stars). nanobot is written in Python under MIT; botman is written in PHP under MIT. nanobot has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, botman 13%. nanobot was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chatbot), 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
| nanobot | botman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 48K | ★ 6.2K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.5K | ⑂ 812 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick nanobot if
- You weight community size — 48K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick botman if
- You want the botman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and botman fits your workflow better
About nanobot
nanobot is an ultra lightweight, open source, self hosted personal AI agent framework written in Python, aimed at individual developers and small teams who want to run their own agent through a browser WebUI, a terminal, or chat apps instead of renting a hosted assistant.
read the full nanobot overview →
About botman
BotMan is a framework agnostic PHP library for building chat bots that run across multiple messaging platforms from a single codebase, aimed at PHP developers and Laravel teams who want cross platform bot logic without writing separate integration code for every service.
read the full botman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is nanobot or botman more popular?
nanobot has 48,372 GitHub stars and botman has 6,160. nanobot has the larger community by that measure.
Are nanobot and botman free?
Both are open source. nanobot is licensed under MIT and botman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between nanobot and botman?
nanobot is written in Python and botman in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, nanobot or botman?
Choose nanobot if you want the larger community (48,372 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose botman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.