head to head · open source
pi vs Tabby
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars, 13,437 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Tabby has 33,884 stars, 1,788 forks, 335 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. pi leads on adoption by 215% (106,586 vs 33,884 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; Tabby is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Tabby 5%. pi 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
| pi | Tabby | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 107K | ★ 34K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-06-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 1.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 107K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Tabby if
- You want the Tabby feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Tabby fits your workflow better
About pi
Pi is a modular agent toolkit written in TypeScript for building and running terminal based AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem and provides composable packages for LLM integration, agent orchestration, and terminal UI rendering. The project centers on @earendil works/pi coding agent , an interactive CLI agent, supported by core runtime, AI abstraction, and TUI libraries.
About Tabby
Tabby is a self hosted, open source AI coding assistant that acts as an on premises alternative to GitHub Copilot, aimed at developers and engineering teams that want code completion and chat without routing source code through a third party cloud service.
read the full Tabby overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or Tabby more popular?
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars and Tabby has 33,884. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and Tabby free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT, and Tabby has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between pi and Tabby?
pi is written in TypeScript and Tabby in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, pi or Tabby?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (106,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Tabby if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.