head to head · open source
ragflow vs LightRAG
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars, 10,764 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped today. LightRAG has 39,738 stars, 5,589 forks, 222 open issues and last shipped today. ragflow leads on adoption by 129% (90,911 vs 39,738 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 | ★ 91K | ★ 40K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 5.6K |
| 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 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
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 LightRAG
LightRAG is a Python retrieval augmented generation framework, released under the MIT licence and presented in an EMNLP 2025 paper, that builds a knowledge graph over documents so that queries can be answered from both graph structure and vector similarity.
read the full LightRAG overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or LightRAG more popular?
ragflow has 90,911 GitHub stars and LightRAG has 39,738. 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 (90,911 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose LightRAG if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.