head to head · open source
OpenClaw vs kotaemon
OpenClaw has 393,747 GitHub stars, 82,755 forks, 6,671 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kotaemon has 25,849 stars, 2,164 forks, 247 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. OpenClaw leads on adoption by 1,423% (393,747 vs 25,849 stars). OpenClaw is written in TypeScript under MIT; kotaemon is written in Python under Apache-2.0. OpenClaw has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, kotaemon 8%. OpenClaw 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
| OpenClaw | kotaemon | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 394K | ★ 26K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-07-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 83K | ⑂ 2.2K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenClaw if
- You weight community size — 394K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- 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 OpenClaw
OpenClaw 🦞 — Your assistant, on your devices, in your chats OpenClaw is an open source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and meets you in the channels you already use: Discord, iMessage, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, and 20+ more, plus native apps for macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. One Gateway runs it as a personal assistant on a laptop or as a shared team deployment; configuration is the only difference. Yours, with no catch. State, memory, and credentials live on your hardware. Models and agent harnesses (Claude, Codex, local models) are plugins you can swap without changing anything…
read the full OpenClaw overview →
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 OpenClaw or kotaemon more popular?
OpenClaw has 393,747 GitHub stars and kotaemon has 25,849. OpenClaw has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenClaw and kotaemon free?
Both are open source. OpenClaw is licensed under MIT and kotaemon under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenClaw and kotaemon?
OpenClaw is written in TypeScript 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, OpenClaw or kotaemon?
Choose OpenClaw if you want the larger community (393,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kotaemon if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.