head to head · open source
odysseus vs botman
odysseus has 94,935 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 1,233 open issues and last shipped yesterday. botman has 6,148 stars, 813 forks, 10 open issues and last shipped 7 months ago. odysseus leads on adoption by 1,444% (94,935 vs 6,148 stars). odysseus is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; botman is written in PHP under MIT. odysseus has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, botman 13%. odysseus 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
| odysseus | botman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 95K | ★ 6.1K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-04-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 813 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick odysseus if
- You weight community size — 95K 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 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 odysseus
A self hosted AI workspace for chat, agents, research, documents, email, notes, calendar, and local model workflows. Quick Start · Setup Guide · Contributing · Roadmap Quick Start dev is the default branch and gets the newest changes first. Use main if you want the more curated branch. Open when the containers are healthy. The first admin password is printed in docker compose logs odysseus . Native installs, GPU notes, Windows/macOS instructions, HTTPS, and configuration live in the setup guide. Features Chat + Agents — local/API models, tools, MCP, files, shell, skills, and memory. Cookbook — hardware aware…
read the full odysseus overview →
About botman
BotMan If you want to learn how to create reusable PHP packages yourself, take a look at my upcoming PHP Package Development video course. About BotMan BotMan is a framework agnostic PHP library that is designed to simplify the task of developing innovative bots for multiple messaging platforms, including Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Bot Framework, Nexmo, HipChat, Facebook Messenger and WeChat. If you want to learn how to create reusable PHP packages yourself, take a look at my upcoming PHP Package Development video course. Documentation You can find the BotMan documentation at Stand Alone Configuration If you are…
read the full botman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is odysseus or botman more popular?
odysseus has 94,935 GitHub stars and botman has 6,148. odysseus has the larger community by that measure.
Are odysseus and botman free?
Both are open source. odysseus is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and botman under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between odysseus and botman?
odysseus 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, odysseus or botman?
Choose odysseus if you want the larger community (94,935 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose botman if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.