head to head · open source
Khoj vs SurfSense
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars, 2,529 forks, 148 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. SurfSense has 16,717 stars, 1,597 forks, 130 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Khoj leads on adoption by 127% (37,946 vs 16,717 stars). Khoj is written in Python under AGPL-3.0; SurfSense is written in Python under Apache-2.0. Khoj has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, SurfSense 10%. SurfSense was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (agent, ai), 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Khoj | SurfSense | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 38K | ★ 17K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-08-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.5K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Khoj if
- You weight community size — 38K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick SurfSense if
- You want the SurfSense 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 SurfSense fits your workflow better
About Khoj
Your AI second brain 📑 Docs • 🌐 Web • 🔥 App • 💬 Discord • ✍🏽 Blog 🎁 New Meet 🌶️ Pipali our open source AI coworker that runs on your computer. Read about Khoj's excellent performance on modern retrieval and reasoning benchmarks. Overview Khoj is a personal AI app to extend your capabilities. It smoothly scales up from an on device personal AI to a cloud scale enterprise AI. Chat with any local or online LLM (e.g llama3, qwen, gemma, mistral, gpt, claude, gemini, deepseek). Get answers from the internet and your docs (including image, pdf, markdown, org mode, word, notion files). Access it from your…
About SurfSense
English Español Português हिन्दी 简体中文 SurfSense: The Open Source NotebookLM Alternative for Open Web Research SurfSense is the open source NotebookLM alternative for AI agents , an open web research platform with live data connectors. Your agents research the live web with structured data from Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Amazon, Walmart, Google Maps, Google Search, Indeed, and any page on the open web , through one REST API or MCP server . Scheduled and event triggered agents turn what they find into briefs and alerts, and a built in knowledge base keeps every finding searchable with citations. [!NOTE]…
read the full SurfSense overview →
More in Productivity & Utilities
Related comparisons
More Note Taking & Knowledge Management projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Note Taking & Knowledge Management field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Khoj or SurfSense more popular?
Khoj has 37,946 GitHub stars and SurfSense has 16,717. Khoj has the larger community by that measure.
Are Khoj and SurfSense free?
Both are open source. Khoj is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and SurfSense under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Khoj and SurfSense?
Khoj is written in Python and SurfSense 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, Khoj or SurfSense?
Choose Khoj if you want the larger community (37,946 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose SurfSense if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.