head to head · open source
chatbox vs QwenPaw
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars, 4,253 forks, 1,290 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. QwenPaw has 35,130 stars, 3,119 forks, 990 open issues and last shipped today. chatbox leads on adoption by 19% (41,814 vs 35,130 stars). chatbox is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0; QwenPaw is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. chatbox has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, QwenPaw 9%. QwenPaw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (chatbot), 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
| chatbox | QwenPaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 35K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.3K | ⑂ 3.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick chatbox if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick QwenPaw if
- You want the QwenPaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and QwenPaw fits your workflow better
About chatbox
Chatbox (Community Edition) is a cross platform desktop client for large language models, written in TypeScript and released under the GPL 3.0 license. It runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and it connects to a range of providers including OpenAI (ChatGPT), Azure OpenAI, Claude, Google Gemini Pro, Ollama and ChatGLM 6B. The project lives in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, where desktop chat front ends sit between a user and one or more hosted or locally hosted model APIs. The repository carries 41,767 stars and 4,251 forks across four years of history.
read the full chatbox overview →
About QwenPaw
QwenPaw is a personal AI assistant harness under the Apache 2.0 licence, aimed at people who want an LLM agent running on their own machine or in their own cloud account and reachable from the chat apps they already use.
read the full QwenPaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is chatbox or QwenPaw more popular?
chatbox has 41,814 GitHub stars and QwenPaw has 35,130. chatbox has the larger community by that measure.
Are chatbox and QwenPaw free?
Both are open source. chatbox is licensed under GPL-3.0 and QwenPaw under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between chatbox and QwenPaw?
chatbox is written in TypeScript and QwenPaw in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, chatbox or QwenPaw?
Choose chatbox if you want the larger community (41,814 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose QwenPaw if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.