head to head · open source
Tabby vs calico
Tabby has 33,921 GitHub stars, 1,793 forks, 335 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. calico has 7,409 stars, 1,619 forks, 279 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tabby leads on adoption by 358% (33,921 vs 7,409 stars). Tabby is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; calico is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Tabby has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, calico 22%. calico 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
| Tabby | calico | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 34K | ★ 7.4K |
| License | Custom / other | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-06-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tabby if
- You weight community size — 34K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick calico if
- You want the calico feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and calico fits your workflow better
About Tabby
🐾 Tabby 📚 Docs • 💬 Slack • 🗺️ Roadmap English 简体中文 日本語 Tabby is a self hosted AI coding assistant, offering an open source and on premises alternative to GitHub Copilot. It boasts several key features: Self contained, with no need for a DBMS or cloud service. OpenAPI interface, easy to integrate with existing infrastructure (e.g Cloud IDE). Supports consumer grade GPUs. 🔥 What's New 12/12/2025 Get your GitHub issues implemented by connecting them to Pochi tasks and create PRs directly from the sidebar with a breakdown of CI/Lint/Test results vscode@0.20.0. 07/02/2025 v0.30 supports indexing GitLab Merge…
read the full Tabby overview →
About calico
Calico Quickstart Docs Contribute Slack Releases 🐾 Welcome to Project Calico! Project Calico, created and maintained by [Tigera][tigera], is an open source project with an active development and user community. Calico Open Source has grown to be the most widely adopted solution for container networking and security, powering 8M+ nodes daily across 166 countries. 🌟 Why use Calico? Data Plane Choice : eBPF, standard Linux, Windows, and VPP — versatility in network solutions. Interoperability : Works across multiple distros, multiple clouds, bare metal, and VMs. Optimized Performance : Engineered for high speed…
read the full calico overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Tabby or calico more popular?
Tabby has 33,921 GitHub stars and calico has 7,409. Tabby has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tabby and calico free?
Both are open source. Tabby has no licence declared in this registry, and calico is licensed under Apache-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Tabby and calico?
Tabby is written in Rust and calico in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Tabby or calico?
Choose Tabby if you want the larger community (33,921 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose calico if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.