LobeHub vs NextChat
LobeHub and NextChat are both AI assistants software. LobeHub is open source under a license set out in its repository, with 84k GitHub stars. NextChat is open source under MIT, with 89k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick LobeHub when
- You want a polished multi-model chat and agent workspace, hosted or self-hosted.
- Pick NextChat when
- You want a fast personal chat front end you can deploy to Vercel or run as a desktop app.
Side by side
An AI workspace for chatting with many model providers and organising agents that run scheduled tasks, with knowledge bases, plugins and MCP, as web, desktop or hosted service.
A lightweight AI chat client for web and desktop that works with your own API keys for OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek and others, or through its paid account service.
Its community licence restricts commercial derivative works, and self-hosting the server version needs Postgres and object storage.
The project now steers users toward its own paid service, and team features are limited.
Production-ready
Usable
Self-hosted server, cloud service and desktop app
Self-hosted server, desktop app and cloud service
TypeScript, Next.js, React, Drizzle and PostgreSQL
TypeScript, Next.js, React and Tauri
Open source, license unclear on GitHub
Open source, MIT (permissive)
GitHub could not read the license. Check it in the repository before reusing any code.
You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.
84k GitHub stars
89k GitHub stars
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release v2.3.0.
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release v2.16.1.
Other comparisons
More AI assistants
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.