head to head · open source
utopia vs open-knowledge
utopia has 8,667 GitHub stars, 1,185 forks, 27 open issues and last shipped yesterday. open-knowledge has 4,781 stars, 327 forks, 38 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. utopia leads on adoption by 81% (8,667 vs 4,781 stars). utopia is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; open-knowledge is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. utopia has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, open-knowledge 7%. utopia was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (knowledge-base, llm), 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.
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Side by side
| utopia | open-knowledge | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.7K | ★ 4.8K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-04 | 2026-11-03 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.2K | ⑂ 327 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick utopia if
- You weight community size — 8.7K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick open-knowledge if
- You want the open-knowledge feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and open-knowledge fits your workflow better
About utopia
Utopia Philosophy · Quick start · Features · Roadmap The enterprise world model built by DeepLethe. It is the first open substrate for knowledge engineering that learns passively and governs itself. Where a knowledge graph or a vector store works to hold present knowledge, Utopia puts time awareness and ontology in the base layer: the knowledge system evolves as material arrives, and conflict detection, reasoning and decision making all run against that ontology. It deploys offline, so a company can stand up a knowledge foundation, a decision core its agents can trust, and a compliance audit trail on hardware it…
read the full utopia overview →
About open-knowledge
OpenKnowledge is a beautiful markdown editor with integrations with Claude, Codex, and other harnesses. For knowledge bases, LLM wikis, specs, and notes. Private, local, and free. website • desktop app • web UI + cli • 𝕏 • discord Features Highlights: Full true WYSIWYG so that editing markdown files feels like editing a Google Doc or Notion page. Desktop app (macOS, Windows, Linux) and web UI with file navigator, search, tabs, graph wiki link viewer, and more. Integrated side by side AI editing with Claude, Codex, OpenCode, Pi and others . Can be used with any harness/agent via MCP/CLI. Out of the box MCP…
read the full open-knowledge overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is utopia or open-knowledge more popular?
utopia has 8,667 GitHub stars and open-knowledge has 4,781. utopia has the larger community by that measure.
Are utopia and open-knowledge free?
Both are open source. utopia is licensed under Apache-2.0 and open-knowledge under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between utopia and open-knowledge?
utopia is written in Rust and open-knowledge in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, utopia or open-knowledge?
Choose utopia if you want the larger community (8,667 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose open-knowledge if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.