head to head · open source
novu vs parlant
novu has 40,002 GitHub stars, 4,494 forks, 105 open issues and last shipped yesterday. parlant has 18,290 stars, 1,555 forks, 41 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. novu leads on adoption by 119% (40,002 vs 18,290 stars). novu is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence; parlant is written in Python under Apache-2.0. novu has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, parlant 9%. novu 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
| novu | parlant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 18K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-07-12 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.5K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick novu if
- You weight community size — 40K 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 parlant if
- You want the parlant feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and parlant fits your workflow better
About novu
Novu is an open source communication infrastructure platform for building and managing multi channel notifications in products and connecting them to AI agents. It lives in the Node.js/TypeScript ecosystem and targets developers who need to send and receive messages across email, SMS, push, in app inbox, chat, and collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams.
About parlant
Parlant is a Python project licensed under Apache 2.0, and it presents itself as an interaction control harness for customer facing AI agents. It lives in the open source large language model ecosystem, with topic tags for ai agents, llm, openai, gemini, llama3, genai, python, customer service, customer success, and ai alignment. The README describes a server based Python SDK for creating agents, observations, and guidelines.
read the full parlant overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is novu or parlant more popular?
novu has 40,002 GitHub stars and parlant has 18,290. novu has the larger community by that measure.
Are novu and parlant free?
Both are open source. novu has no licence declared in this registry, and parlant is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between novu and parlant?
novu is written in TypeScript and parlant 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, novu or parlant?
Choose novu if you want the larger community (40,002 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose parlant if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.