head to head · open source
ragflow vs outlines
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars, 10,759 forks, 1,525 open issues and last shipped yesterday. outlines has 15,825 stars, 880 forks, 166 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. ragflow leads on adoption by 474% (90,889 vs 15,825 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 | ★ 91K | ★ 16K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 11K | ⑂ 880 |
| 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 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
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 outlines
Outlines is a Python library for structured generation with large language models, released under the Apache 2.0 license and maintained by the team at .txt. It lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically among AI development platforms and structured generation tooling, and it is distributed through PyPI. The project describes itself as a way to guarantee structured outputs during generation rather than repairing them afterward, and its topic list places it alongside work on context free grammars, regular expressions, JSON, prompt engineering, and symbolic AI.
read the full outlines overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ragflow or outlines more popular?
ragflow has 90,889 GitHub stars and outlines has 15,825. 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 (90,889 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.