head to head · open source
ragflow vs crewAI
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars, 10,764 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. crewAI has 58,726 stars, 8,498 forks, 353 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow leads on adoption by 55% (90,911 vs 58,726 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 14%. crewAI 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 | ★ 91K | ★ 59K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 8.5K |
| 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 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
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 crewAI
CrewAI is an open source Python framework for orchestrating role playing, autonomous AI agents through collaborative Crews and event driven Flows, released under the MIT licence and built for developers and teams producing multi agent workflows in production.
read the full crewAI overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or crewAI more popular?
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars and crewAI has 58,726. 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 (90,911 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose crewAI if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.