head to head · open source
Zammad vs rt
Zammad has 5,924 GitHub stars, 1,056 forks, 451 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rt has 1,157 stars, 298 forks, 82 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Zammad leads on adoption by 412% (5,924 vs 1,157 stars). Zammad is written in Ruby under AGPL-3.0; rt is written in Perl under GPL-2.0. Zammad has attracted 18% as many forks as stars, rt 26%. Zammad was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (customer-support, helpdesk, support), 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
| Zammad | rt | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 5.9K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Ruby | Perl |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.1K | ⑂ 298 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zammad if
- You weight community size — 5.9K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Ruby
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rt if
- You want the rt feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Perl
- You evaluated both and rt fits your workflow better
About Zammad
Zammad is a web based, open source helpdesk and customer support platform, released under the GNU AGPLv3 and written primarily in Ruby on the Rails framework. The source code lives on GitHub and is owned by the Zammad Foundation, an entity that the README describes as independent of commercial providers such as Zammad GmbH. Development is carried out by the team at Zammad GmbH together with the community, and the project states that the software is and will stay open source.
read the full Zammad overview →
About rt
Request Tracker (RT) is an open source, enterprise grade issue and ticket tracking system written in Perl for organizations that need to track what needs to get done, who is working on which tasks, what has already been done, and when tasks were or were not completed.
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zammad or rt more popular?
Zammad has 5,924 GitHub stars and rt has 1,157. Zammad has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zammad and rt free?
Both are open source. Zammad is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and rt under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zammad and rt?
Zammad is written in Ruby and rt in Perl. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Zammad or rt?
Choose Zammad if you want the larger community (5,924 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose rt if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.