head to head · open source
ponytail vs PixelRAG
ponytail has 141,465 GitHub stars, 7,581 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. PixelRAG has 9,984 stars, 856 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. ponytail leads on adoption by 1,317% (141,465 vs 9,984 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; PixelRAG is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, PixelRAG 9%. ponytail 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
| ponytail | PixelRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 10.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 856 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 141K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick PixelRAG if
- You want the PixelRAG 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 PixelRAG fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail is an open source agent skill for JavaScript and LLM based coding tools that makes an AI agent write the minimum working code for a task, and it is built for developers and teams running agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor against real repositories.
read the full ponytail overview →
About PixelRAG
PixelRAG is the official open source codebase for the paper "PIXELRAG: Web Screenshots Beat Text for Retrieval Augmented Generation," an Apache 2.0 Python project from Berkeley SkyLab, BAIR and Berkeley NLP that renders web pages, PDFs and images to screenshot tiles and retrieves over those images instead of parsed text, built for RAG engineers, agent developers and researchers who need tables, charts, diagrams and layout to survive retrieval.
read the full PixelRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or PixelRAG more popular?
ponytail has 141,465 GitHub stars and PixelRAG has 9,984. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and PixelRAG free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT and PixelRAG under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ponytail and PixelRAG?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and PixelRAG 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, ponytail or PixelRAG?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,465 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose PixelRAG if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.