head to head · open source
ragflow vs crewAI
ragflow has 93,460 GitHub stars, 11,215 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crewAI has 60,469 stars, 9,025 forks, 353 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ragflow leads on adoption by 55% (93,460 vs 60,469 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; crewAI is written in Python under MIT. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, crewAI 15%. ragflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (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 | crewAI | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 60K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 9.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ragflow if
- You weight community size — 93K 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 crewAI if
- You want the crewAI feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and crewAI fits your workflow better
About ragflow
Cloud Documentation Roadmap Discord 📕 Table of Contents 💡 What is RAGFlow? 🎮 Get Started 🔥 Latest Updates 🌟 Key Features 🔎 System Architecture 🎬 Self Hosting 🔧 Configurations 🔧 Build a Docker Image 🔨 Launch Service from Source for Development 📚 Documentation 📜 Roadmap 🏄 Community 🙌 Contributing 💡 What is RAGFlow? RAGFlow is a leading open source Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) engine that fuses cutting edge RAG with Agent capabilities to create a superior context layer for LLMs. It offers a streamlined RAG workflow adaptable to enterprises of any scale. Powered by a converged context engine…
read the full ragflow overview →
About crewAI
Homepage · Open Source · Docs · Start Cloud Trial · Blog · Forum Fast and Flexible Multi Agent Automation Framework CrewAI is an open source Python framework with high level abstractions and low level APIs for building production ready multi agent workflows. It gives developers autonomous agent collaboration through Crews and precise, event driven control through Flows. CrewAI Crews : Optimize for autonomy and collaborative intelligence with role based AI agents. CrewAI Flows : Build event driven automations that combine precise workflow control, single LLM calls, and native support for Crews. With over 100,000…
read the full crewAI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or crewAI more popular?
ragflow has 93,460 GitHub stars and crewAI has 60,469. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and crewAI free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and crewAI under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and crewAI?
ragflow is written in Go and crewAI 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 crewAI?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (93,460 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crewAI if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.