head to head · open source
ragflow vs LightRAG
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars, 11,207 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LightRAG has 40,487 stars, 5,752 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. ragflow leads on adoption by 131% (93,365 vs 40,487 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; LightRAG is written in Python under MIT. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, LightRAG 14%. ragflow was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | LightRAG | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 40K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 5.8K |
| 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 LightRAG if
- You want the LightRAG feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and LightRAG 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 LightRAG
🚀 LightRAG: Simple and Fast Retrieval Augmented Generation 🎉 News [2026.07]🎯[New Feature]: Add Smart Heading recognition feature for word documents. [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Merge RagAnything into LightRAG 🎉. Multimodal content parsing and extraction via MinerU / Docling services. [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Introducing four selectable text chunking strategies: Fix , Recursive , Vector , and Paragraph . [2026.05]🎯[New Feature]: Role specific LLM configuration support, 4 distinct roles: EXTRACT, QUERY, KEYWORDS, and VLM, with independent LLM settings. [2026.03]🎯[New Feature]: Integrated OpenSearch as a…
read the full LightRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or LightRAG more popular?
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars and LightRAG has 40,487. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and LightRAG free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and LightRAG under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and LightRAG?
ragflow is written in Go and LightRAG 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 LightRAG?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (93,365 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose LightRAG if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.