head to head · open source
PaddleOCR vs chonkie
PaddleOCR has 89,852 GitHub stars, 11,370 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. chonkie has 4,759 stars, 356 forks, 48 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. PaddleOCR leads on adoption by 1,788% (89,852 vs 4,759 stars). PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0; chonkie is written in Python under MIT. PaddleOCR has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, chonkie 7%. chonkie 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
| PaddleOCR | chonkie | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 90K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 356 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick PaddleOCR if
- You weight community size — 90K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick chonkie if
- You want the chonkie feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and chonkie fits your workflow better
About PaddleOCR
PaddleOCR is an Apache 2.0 Python OCR and document AI toolkit that converts PDFs and images into structured, LLM ready JSON or Markdown across more than 100 languages, and it is built for developers who need to feed documents into RAG pipelines, agents, and document parsing services.
read the full PaddleOCR overview →
About chonkie
Chonkie is a lightweight, MIT licensed Python ingestion library that turns raw documents into retrieval ready chunks for RAG pipelines, and it is built for developers who are tired of writing yet another custom chunker or absorbing the overhead of a large framework just to split text.
read the full chonkie overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is PaddleOCR or chonkie more popular?
PaddleOCR has 89,852 GitHub stars and chonkie has 4,759. PaddleOCR has the larger community by that measure.
Are PaddleOCR and chonkie free?
Both are open source. PaddleOCR is licensed under Apache-2.0 and chonkie under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between PaddleOCR and chonkie?
PaddleOCR is written in Python and chonkie 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, PaddleOCR or chonkie?
Choose PaddleOCR if you want the larger community (89,852 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose chonkie if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.