head to head · open source
OpenContracts vs sycamore
OpenContracts has 1,534 GitHub stars, 199 forks, 11 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. sycamore has 605 stars, 71 forks, 57 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. OpenContracts leads on adoption by 154% (1,534 vs 605 stars). OpenContracts is written in Python under MIT; sycamore is written in Python under Apache-2.0. OpenContracts has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, sycamore 12%. OpenContracts was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, etl, llm), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
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
| OpenContracts | sycamore | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.5K | ★ 605 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-08-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 199 | ⑂ 71 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenContracts if
- You weight community size — 1.5K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sycamore if
- You want the sycamore 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 sycamore fits your workflow better
About OpenContracts
OpenContracts (Demo) Open source document intelligence you can build on. Point OpenContracts at a repository of documents and get a programmable citation graph — human annotation, structured extraction, AI agents, and a built in MCP server, all behind one API. Self hosted, MIT licensed, and built for teams working at scale. Same graph, three surfaces: a GraphQL + REST API for your apps, a Model Context Protocol server for your agents, and a React UI for your team. From documents to a citation graph — in about a minute Create a corpus, drop in your documents, and click Set up . That one click installs the…
read the full OpenContracts overview →
About sycamore
Sycamore is an open source, AI powered document processing engine for ETL, RAG, LLM based applications, and analytics on unstructured data. Sycamore can partition and enrich a wide range of document types including reports, presentations, transcripts, manuals, and more. It can analyze and chunk complex documents such as PDFs and images with embedded tables, figures, graphs, and other infographics. Check out an example notebook. For processing documents, Sycamore leverages Aryn DocParse (formerly known as the Aryn Partitioning Service), a serverless, GPU powered API for segmenting and labeling documents, doing…
read the full sycamore overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenContracts or sycamore more popular?
OpenContracts has 1,534 GitHub stars and sycamore has 605. OpenContracts has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenContracts and sycamore free?
Both are open source. OpenContracts is licensed under MIT and sycamore under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenContracts and sycamore?
OpenContracts is written in Python and sycamore 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, OpenContracts or sycamore?
Choose OpenContracts if you want the larger community (1,534 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose sycamore if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.