GuideAI-assisted · editor-reviewedUpdated 6 hours ago · 8 min read · by GitPalace Editorial

The Best Open-Source Chatbot Projects: From Desktop Clients to Full Frameworks

Whether you want a polished chat client, a bot that lives inside your messaging apps, or a framework to build your own conversational assistant, these five projects cover the strongest options for building and running chatbots today.

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⚠wechaty — low recent activity since this was written.

⚠FastChat — low recent activity since this was written.

Living article: rankings and health notes are re-checked against GitHub and community data. Ratings are GitPalace community ratings; stars are GitHub stars.

chatbox

TypeScript

★ New GitPalace41.7K GitHub starsGPL-3.0Health: Actively maintained

Chatbox is a desktop AI client for ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models, available on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It gives you a single polished interface for chatting with multiple providers, managing conversations, and keeping your prompts organized. It's ideal for anyone who wants a native chat experience without being locked into one vendor's web app.

Pros

+Native cross-platform desktop app with a clean, focused interface

+Works with many model providers from a single client

+Actively maintained community edition under an open license

Watch-out

−It's a client rather than a platform, so you still need your own API keys or a local model to actually chat.

AstrBot

Python

★ New GitPalace40.1K GitHub starsAGPL-3.0Health: Actively maintained

AstrBot is an all-in-one agent chatbot platform that plugs into mainstream instant messaging apps and connects them to a wide range of LLMs. It ships with a plugin system and a management UI, so individuals and teams can deploy a capable conversational assistant into the chat channels they already use. It suits anyone who wants a bot in Telegram, Discord, QQ, or similar without writing an integration from scratch.

Pros

+Broad messaging-platform coverage out of the box

+Extensible plugin ecosystem and built-in web dashboard

+Actively maintained with multilingual documentation

Watch-out

−The documentation and community skew heavily toward Chinese-language users, which can make troubleshooting harder for others.

python-telegram-bot

Python

★ New GitPalace29.4K GitHub starsGPL-3.0Health: Actively maintained

python-telegram-bot is the long-standing Python wrapper for the Telegram Bot API, providing a pure-Python, asynchronous interface for building Telegram bots. It handles updates, handlers, conversations, and job scheduling so you can focus on your bot's logic. It's the go-to choice for Python developers who want a reliable, well-documented foundation for a Telegram chatbot.

Pros

+Mature, thoroughly documented, and well tested

+Async-first design with helpful conversation and handler abstractions

+Very active community and long track record of keeping pace with Telegram's API

Watch-out

−It's Telegram-only, so a bot targeting multiple messaging platforms will need a different approach.

wechaty

TypeScript

★ New GitPalace23K GitHub starsApache-2.0Health: Low recent activity

Wechaty is a conversational RPA SDK that lets you write chatbot code once and run it across messaging platforms like WeChat and WhatsApp. It abstracts platform differences behind a universal interface, with SDKs in several languages beyond its TypeScript core. It's aimed at developers who need bots on messaging networks that don't offer a friendly official bot API.

Pros

+Write once, deploy to multiple messaging platforms

+Multi-language SDK support and a large plugin ecosystem

+Strong community with extensive examples

Watch-out

−Recent activity has slowed, and its reliance on unofficial platform connectors (puppets) can break when those platforms change.

FastChat

Python

★ New GitPalace39.5K GitHub starsApache-2.0Health: Low recent activity

FastChat is an open platform for training, serving, and evaluating LLM-based chatbots, and is the release repository behind Vicuna and Chatbot Arena. It provides a distributed multi-model serving system with OpenAI-compatible APIs and a web UI, plus tooling for benchmarking chat models against each other. It's best for researchers and engineers who want to host and compare their own chat models rather than call a hosted API.

Pros

+Serve many open models behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint

+Includes evaluation tooling proven by Chatbot Arena

+Covers the full loop from fine-tuning to serving

Watch-out

−Development has slowed considerably, so newer model architectures and serving optimizations may be better handled by more active inference stacks.

At a glance

chatboxAstrBotpython-telegram-botwechaty

GitPalace rating————

GitHub stars41.7K40.1K29.4K23K

Would recommend————

LicenseGPL-3.0AGPL-3.0GPL-3.0Apache-2.0

HealthActively maintainedActively maintainedActively maintainedLow recent activity

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