head to head · open source
pi vs Tabby
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars, 15,353 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tabby has 33,921 stars, 1,793 forks, 335 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pi leads on adoption by 253% (119,586 vs 33,921 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; Tabby is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Tabby 5%. pi 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
| pi | Tabby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 120K | ★ 34K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-06-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 120K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Tabby if
- You want the Tabby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Tabby fits your workflow better
About pi
New issues and PRs from new contributors are auto closed by default. Maintainers review auto closed issues daily. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Pi Agent Harness This is the home of the Pi agent harness project including our self extensible coding agent. @earendil works/pi coding agent : Interactive coding agent CLI @earendil works/pi agent core : Agent runtime with tool calling and state management @earendil works/pi ai : Unified multi provider LLM API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, …) To learn more about Pi: Visit pi.dev, the project website with demos Read the documentation, but you can also ask the agent to explain…
About Tabby
🐾 Tabby 📚 Docs • 💬 Slack • 🗺️ Roadmap English 简体中文 日本語 Tabby is a self hosted AI coding assistant, offering an open source and on premises alternative to GitHub Copilot. It boasts several key features: Self contained, with no need for a DBMS or cloud service. OpenAPI interface, easy to integrate with existing infrastructure (e.g Cloud IDE). Supports consumer grade GPUs. 🔥 What's New 12/12/2025 Get your GitHub issues implemented by connecting them to Pochi tasks and create PRs directly from the sidebar with a breakdown of CI/Lint/Test results vscode@0.20.0. 07/02/2025 v0.30 supports indexing GitLab Merge…
read the full Tabby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or Tabby more popular?
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars and Tabby has 33,921. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and Tabby free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT, and Tabby has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between pi and Tabby?
pi is written in TypeScript and Tabby in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pi or Tabby?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (119,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Tabby if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.