Kotaemon vs Verba
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Kotaemon | Verba |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 92 · Excellent | 15 · At risk |
| Status | Actively maintained | Archived |
| Category | Self-Hosted AI | Self-Hosted AI |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Language | Python | Python |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Easy |
| Min. RAM | 4,096 MB | 2,048 MB |
| Deployment | docker, bare-metal | docker, bare-metal |
| GitHub stars | ★ 25,778 | ★ 7,704 |
| First released | 2024 | 2023 |
| Replaces | NotebookLM | NotebookLM |
What are Kotaemon and Verba?
Kotaemon
Kotaemon is an open-source, customizable RAG application for chatting with documents. It offers a clean interface with multimodal document support, citations, and a complex reasoning pipeline.
- Clean document chat UI
- Citation support
- Multimodal RAG
- Configurable pipelines
Verba
Verba is an open-source retrieval-augmented generation application that lets you query and chat with your data. Built around Weaviate, it offers a customizable interface and supports many model providers.
- End-to-end RAG app
- Weaviate integration
- Many model providers
- Customizable UI
Kotaemon vs Verba: key differences
The biggest difference is maintenance: Verba's repository is archived and no longer developed, while Kotaemon is actively maintained. Both projects are written in Python. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Kotaemon versus BSD-3-Clause for Verba. Verba is the lighter option, starting around 2,048 MB of RAM against 4,096 MB for Kotaemon. Kotaemon has the considerably larger community, at 25,778 GitHub stars versus 7,704.
Why pick each one
Choose Kotaemon if…
- Clean citation UI
- Multimodal document support
- GraphRAG support included
Watch out for
- Heavy dependency stack
- Configuration can be involved
Choose Verba if…
- Released under the BSD-3-Clause license
- Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Mature project with 7.7k GitHub stars
Frequently asked questions
Is Kotaemon or Verba better?
Neither is universally better. Kotaemon has the larger community, while Verba is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.
Are Kotaemon and Verba free and open-source?
Yes. Kotaemon is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Verba under BSD-3-Clause. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Kotaemon and Verba with Docker?
Kotaemon: yes. Verba: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Kotaemon or Verba?
Verba has the smaller minimum footprint at 2,048 MB of RAM, compared to about 4,096 MB for Kotaemon. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.