head to head · open source
LiveKit vs open-claude-cowork
LiveKit has 21,000 GitHub stars, 2,354 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped yesterday. open-claude-cowork has 4,359 stars, 735 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. LiveKit leads on adoption by 382% (21,000 vs 4,359 stars). LiveKit is written in Go under Apache-2.0; open-claude-cowork is written in JavaScript under MIT. LiveKit has attracted 11% as many forks as stars, open-claude-cowork 17%. LiveKit 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
| LiveKit | open-claude-cowork | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 21K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-05-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.4K | ⑂ 735 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick LiveKit if
- You weight community size — 21K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick open-claude-cowork if
- You want the open-claude-cowork feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and open-claude-cowork fits your workflow better
About LiveKit
LiveKit is an open source realtime infrastructure project for voice, video, and physical AI agents, and it lives in the WebRTC, media server, and voice AI ecosystem. The repository contains the LiveKit server, a scalable distributed WebRTC SFU written in Go and built on Pion WebRTC. It moves realtime audio, video, and data between people, devices, and AI models, while SDKs, agent frameworks, and companion services are provided separately.
read the full LiveKit overview →
About open-claude-cowork
Open Claude Cowork is an open source JavaScript desktop chat application in the Electron, Node.js, and Anthropic Claude ecosystem. It uses the Claude Agent SDK, Composio Tool Router, and MCP, and includes Secure Clawdbot for messaging platforms.
read the full open-claude-cowork overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is LiveKit or open-claude-cowork more popular?
LiveKit has 21,000 GitHub stars and open-claude-cowork has 4,359. LiveKit has the larger community by that measure.
Are LiveKit and open-claude-cowork free?
Both are open source. LiveKit is licensed under Apache-2.0 and open-claude-cowork under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between LiveKit and open-claude-cowork?
LiveKit is written in Go and open-claude-cowork in JavaScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, LiveKit or open-claude-cowork?
Choose LiveKit if you want the larger community (21,000 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose open-claude-cowork if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.