Chatwoot vs LibreDesk
Chatwoot and LibreDesk are both live chat software. Chatwoot is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 39k GitHub stars. LibreDesk is open source under AGPL-3.0, with 3.1k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick Chatwoot when
- You want to self-host a shared inbox, especially one that handles WhatsApp or chat beside email.
- Pick LibreDesk when
- A small team wants a lightweight self-hosted Intercom or Zendesk replacement that is easy to deploy.
Side by side
A customer messaging inbox for email, website chat, WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS and social, with assignment, private notes, collision warnings, canned responses, rules, reports, contact profiles and mobile apps.
A customer support desk for email, live chat and WhatsApp, with shared inbox, automations and SLAs, distributed as a single Go binary.
Reply-time policies are in the paid Enterprise edition, and the chat-style screen handles long email threads less naturally than an email client.
About 18 months old with one main maintainer.
Production-ready
Usable
Self-hosted server, cloud service and mobile app
Self-hosted server
Ruby, Rails, Vue, PostgreSQL and Redis
Go, Vue, PostgreSQL and Redis
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Open source, AGPL-3.0 (network copyleft)
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
Use inside your business is unrestricted. If you change it and let customers use it over the internet, you must publish your changes.
39k GitHub stars
3.1k GitHub stars
Established: started 7 years ago, latest release v4.19.1.
Established: started 2 years ago, latest release v2.9.2.
Other comparisons
More live chat and customer messaging tools
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-06 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.