head to head · open source
tubearchivist vs Lychee
tubearchivist has 8,451 GitHub stars, 420 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 21 days ago. Lychee has 4,295 stars, 377 forks, 37 open issues and last shipped yesterday. tubearchivist leads on adoption by 97% (8,451 vs 4,295 stars). tubearchivist is written in Python under GPL-3.0; Lychee is written in PHP under MIT. tubearchivist has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Lychee 9%. Lychee 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
| tubearchivist | Lychee | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.5K | ★ 4.3K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-08-28 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 420 | ⑂ 377 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick tubearchivist if
- You weight community size — 8.5K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Lychee if
- You want the Lychee feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and Lychee fits your workflow better
About tubearchivist
Tube Archivist is a self hosted YouTube media server that downloads videos with yt dlp, indexes them with metadata from YouTube, and serves them back through a searchable web interface, built for people whose personal YouTube archive has grown past the point where folders and filenames still work.
read the full tubearchivist overview →
About Lychee
Lychee is a free, open source photo management system written in PHP and released under the MIT license. It is a self hosted web application for managing photo galleries in the PHP, Vue.js, and TypeScript ecosystem described by the repository topics. People can run it on their own server or web space, then upload, manage, and share photos through a browser.
read the full Lychee overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is tubearchivist or Lychee more popular?
tubearchivist has 8,451 GitHub stars and Lychee has 4,295. tubearchivist has the larger community by that measure.
Are tubearchivist and Lychee free?
Both are open source. tubearchivist is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Lychee under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between tubearchivist and Lychee?
tubearchivist is written in Python and Lychee in PHP. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, tubearchivist or Lychee?
Choose tubearchivist if you want the larger community (8,451 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Lychee if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.