head to head · open source
Dify vs ragflow
Dify has 160,251 GitHub stars, 25,336 forks, 1,067 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow has 93,365 stars, 11,207 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Dify leads on adoption by 72% (160,251 vs 93,365 stars). Dify is written in Python under a custom or non-standard licence; ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Dify has attracted 16% as many forks as stars, ragflow 12%. Dify was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agentic-ai, ai), 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
| Dify | ragflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 160K | ★ 93K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 25K | ⑂ 11K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Dify if
- You weight community size — 160K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ragflow if
- You want the ragflow feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and ragflow fits your workflow better
About Dify
Dify Cloud · Self hosting · Documentation · Dify edition overview Dify is an open source LLM app development platform. Its intuitive interface combines AI workflow, RAG pipeline, agent capabilities, model management, observability features (including Opik, Langfuse, and Arize Phoenix) and more, letting you quickly go from prototype to production. Here's a list of the core features: Quick start Before installing Dify, make sure your machine meets the following minimum system requirements: CPU = 2 Core RAM = 4 GiB The easiest way to start the Dify server is through Docker Compose. Before running Dify with the…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Dify or ragflow more popular?
Dify has 160,251 GitHub stars and ragflow has 93,365. Dify has the larger community by that measure.
Are Dify and ragflow free?
Both are open source. Dify has no licence declared in this registry, and ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Dify and ragflow?
Dify is written in Python and ragflow in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Dify or ragflow?
Choose Dify if you want the larger community (160,251 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose ragflow if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.