head to head · open source
ragflow vs AnythingLLM
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars, 10,764 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped today. AnythingLLM has 66,155 stars, 7,348 forks, 311 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow leads on adoption by 37% (90,911 vs 66,155 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; AnythingLLM is written in JavaScript under MIT. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, AnythingLLM 11%. ragflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent-harness, agentic-ai, ai-agents), 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
| ragflow | AnythingLLM | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 91K | ★ 66K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 7.3K |
| 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 AnythingLLM if
- You want the AnythingLLM feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and AnythingLLM 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 AnythingLLM
AnythingLLM is a local first AI application that enables users to chat with their documents using any large language model (LLM), local or cloud hosted. It runs as a self hosted service—by default in Docker—and provides a complete interface for document ingestion, agent orchestration, multi user access, and workflow automation without requiring external cloud dependencies. The project lives in the local AI and AI interaction ecosystem, targeting users who want full control over their data and model selection.
read the full AnythingLLM overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or AnythingLLM more popular?
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars and AnythingLLM has 66,155. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and AnythingLLM free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and AnythingLLM under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and AnythingLLM?
ragflow is written in Go and AnythingLLM in JavaScript. 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 AnythingLLM?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (90,911 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose AnythingLLM if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.