head to head · open source
ragflow vs outlines
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars, 11,207 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. outlines has 15,998 stars, 911 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. ragflow leads on adoption by 484% (93,365 vs 15,998 stars). ragflow is written in Go under Apache-2.0; outlines is written in Python under Apache-2.0. ragflow has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, outlines 6%. 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 | outlines | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-21 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 911 |
| 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 outlines if
- You want the outlines 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 outlines 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 outlines
🗒️ Structured outputs for LLMs 🗒️ Made with ❤👷️ by the team at .txt Trusted by NVIDIA, Cohere, HuggingFace, vLLM, etc. [![PyPI Version][pypi version badge]][pypi] [![Downloads][downloads badge]][pypistats] [![Stars][stars badge]][stars] [![Discord][discord badge]][discord] [![Blog][dottxt blog badge]][dottxt blog] [![Twitter][twitter badge]][twitter] The .txt API is currently in early access. Request access here → 🚀 Building the future of structured generation We're working with select partners to develop new interfaces to structured generation. Need XML, FHIR, custom schemas or grammars? Let's talk. Audit…
read the full outlines overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or outlines more popular?
ragflow has 93,365 GitHub stars and outlines has 15,998. ragflow has the larger community by that measure.
Are ragflow and outlines free?
Both are open source. ragflow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and outlines under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ragflow and outlines?
ragflow is written in Go and outlines 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 outlines?
Choose ragflow if you want the larger community (93,365 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose outlines if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.