head to head · open source
ragflow vs PaddleOCR
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars, 10,759 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. PaddleOCR has 89,729 stars, 11,355 forks, 243 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ragflow leads on adoption by 1% (90,889 vs 89,729 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; PaddleOCR is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, PaddleOCR 13%. ragflow 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
| ragflow | PaddleOCR | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 90K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 11K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ragflow if
- You weight community size — 91K 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 PaddleOCR if
- You want the PaddleOCR 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 PaddleOCR fits your workflow better
About ragflow
RAGFlow is an open source Retrieval Augmented Generation engine that fuses RAG with agent capabilities into a context layer for large language models, built for developers and teams that need to turn complex, unstructured documents into production AI systems.
read the full ragflow overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or PaddleOCR more popular?
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars and PaddleOCR has 89,729. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and PaddleOCR free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and PaddleOCR under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and PaddleOCR?
ragflow is written in Go and PaddleOCR 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, ragflow or PaddleOCR?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (90,889 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose PaddleOCR if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.