head to head · open source
langchain vs ragflow
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars, 25,031 forks, 492 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ragflow has 93,365 stars, 11,207 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. langchain leads on adoption by 59% (148,892 vs 93,365 stars). langchain is written in Python under MIT; ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0. langchain has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, ragflow 12%. langchain 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
| langchain | ragflow | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 149K | ★ 93K |
| License | MIT | 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 langchain if
- You weight community size — 149K stars and counting
- You want the MIT 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 langchain
The agent engineering platform. LangChain is a framework for building agents and LLM powered applications. It helps you chain together interoperable components and third party integrations to simplify AI application development — all while future proofing decisions as the underlying technology evolves. [!TIP] Just getting started? Check out Deep Agents — a higher level package built on LangChain for agents that have built in capabilities for common usage patterns such as planning, subagents, file system usage, and more. Quickstart If you're looking for more advanced customization or agent orchestration, check…
read the full langchain overview →
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 langchain or ragflow more popular?
langchain has 148,892 GitHub stars and ragflow has 93,365. langchain has the larger community by that measure.
Are langchain and ragflow free?
Both are open source. langchain is licensed under MIT and ragflow under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between langchain and ragflow?
langchain 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, langchain or ragflow?
Choose langchain if you want the larger community (148,892 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ragflow if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.