head to head · open source
Zulip vs faraday
Zulip has 25,921 GitHub stars, 10,247 forks, 2,008 open issues and last shipped yesterday. faraday has 6,745 stars, 1,072 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 14 days ago. Zulip leads on adoption by 284% (25,921 vs 6,745 stars). Zulip is written in Python under Apache-2.0; faraday is written in Python under GPL-3.0. Zulip has attracted 40% as many forks as stars, faraday 16%. Zulip was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (collaboration), 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
| Zulip | faraday | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 26K | ★ 6.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 10K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zulip if
- You weight community size — 26K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick faraday if
- You want the faraday feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and faraday fits your workflow better
About Zulip
Zulip is an open source organized team chat application built on topic based threading, aimed at distributed teams that need live and asynchronous conversation in one place, and it is positioned as an open alternative to Slack.
read the full Zulip overview →
About faraday
Faraday is an open source vulnerability management platform that aggregates and normalizes security scanner output into a single multiuser workspace, built for security analysts, AppSec teams, and DevOps engineers who need to track findings through to remediation.
read the full faraday overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Zulip or faraday more popular?
Zulip has 25,921 GitHub stars and faraday has 6,745. Zulip has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zulip and faraday free?
Both are open source. Zulip is licensed under Apache-2.0 and faraday under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zulip and faraday?
Zulip is written in Python and faraday in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Zulip or faraday?
Choose Zulip if you want the larger community (25,921 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose faraday if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.