head to head · open source
ragflow vs headroom
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars, 11,207 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. headroom has 78,657 stars, 6,141 forks, 643 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow leads on adoption by 19% (93,365 vs 78,657 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; headroom is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, headroom 8%. 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, context-engineering), 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 | headroom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 79K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 6.1K |
| 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 headroom if
- You want the headroom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and headroom 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 headroom
Quickstart · Install · Proof · Agents · Docs · Discord · llms.txt AI agents / LLMs: read /llms.txt here, or fetch the live index · full docs blob . Headroom compresses everything your AI agent reads — tool outputs, logs, RAG chunks, files, and conversation history — before it reaches the LLM. Same answers, fraction of the tokens. Compression runs on your machine; no prompt or file content is sent anywhere to be compressed. 10,144 → 1,260 tokens. The same FATAL found. What it does Library — compress(messages) in Python or TypeScript, inline in any app. Proxy — headroom proxy port 8787 , zero code changes, any…
read the full headroom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or headroom more popular?
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars and headroom has 78,657. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and headroom free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and headroom under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and headroom?
ragflow is written in Go and headroom 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 headroom?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (93,365 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose headroom if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.