SHSelfHostIndex

RAGFlow vs Vane

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted self-hosted ai options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
RA RAGFlow RAG engine with deep document understanding VS VA Vane AI-powered search engine (alternative to Perplexity AI)
FeatureRAGFlowVane
CategorySelf-Hosted AISelf-Hosted AI
LicenseApache-2.0MIT
LanguageGoTypeScript
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM8,192 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetesdocker
GitHub stars★ 87,057★ 36,045
First released20242026
ReplacesNotebookLM—

Why pick each one

Choose RAGFlow if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 87.1k GitHub stars
RAGFlow details

Choose Vane if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 36k GitHub stars
  • Written in TypeScript
Vane details

Frequently asked questions

Is RAGFlow or Vane better?

Neither is universally better. RAGFlow has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are RAGFlow and Vane free and open-source?

Yes. RAGFlow is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Vane under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run RAGFlow and Vane with Docker?

RAGFlow: yes. Vane: yes.

Related comparisons