head to head · open source
odysseus vs kotaemon
odysseus has 94,935 GitHub stars, 1,862 forks, 1,233 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,849 stars, 2,164 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. odysseus leads on adoption by 267% (94,935 vs 25,849 stars). odysseus is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. odysseus has attracted 2% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. 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 | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 95K | ★ 26K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| 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 kotaemon if
- You want the kotaemon 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 kotaemon 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…
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About kotaemon
kotaemon An open source clean & customizable RAG UI for chatting with your documents. Built with both end users and developers in mind. Live Demo 1 Live Demo 2 Online Install Colab Notebook (Local RAG) User Guide Developer Guide Feedback Contact Introduction This project serves as a functional RAG UI for both end users who want to do QA on their documents and developers who want to build their own RAG pipeline. For end users Clean & Minimalistic UI : A user friendly interface for RAG based QA. Support for Various LLMs : Compatible with LLM API providers (OpenAI, AzureOpenAI, Cohere, etc.) and local LLMs (via…
read the full kotaemon overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is odysseus or kotaemon more popular?
odysseus has 94,935 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,849. odysseus has the larger community by that measure.
Are odysseus and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. odysseus is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and kotaemon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between odysseus and kotaemon?
odysseus is written in Python and kotaemon 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, odysseus or kotaemon?
Choose odysseus if you want the larger community (94,935 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.