Kotaemon
An open-source, self-hosted RAG app for chatting with your documents using local or hosted models.
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About Kotaemon
Kotaemon is a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) tool. You upload your own documents and then ask questions about them in a chat interface. The answers are drawn from the files you provided.
It runs as a self-hosted web application, and the repository includes a Dockerfile and launch scripts. It works with language models running locally or with hosted model providers. It suits people who want a private question-answering setup over their own papers, reports or notes rather than sending files to a chat service.
Strengths
- Chat with your own documents through a web interface
- Works with local or hosted language models
- Docker deployment available
Limitations
- Needs a server or local setup rather than a simple installer
- Answer quality depends on the model you connect
Details
- Pricing
- FreeFree and open source.
- License
- Open source, license not stated
- Developer
- Cinnamon
- Platforms
- Web, Self-hosted
- How it runs
- Self-hosted
- Best suited for
- Private question answering over your own document collection
- Categories
- Local AI tools, AI assistants
- Last verified
- Added
- Provenance
- Facts checked against the developer's own pages and store listings, 1 sources on file.
Alternatives to Kotaemon
Compare allSoftware that can replace Kotaemon for an important use case, and what changes if you switch.
AnythingLLM
A desktop AI app that answers questions about your own documents, with no account and no API key needed.
AnythingLLM is an MIT-licensed desktop app for document chat with workspaces, installed as an app rather than a server setup.
RAGFlow
An open-source, self-hostable RAG engine with document ingestion, hybrid search and a visual agent builder.
RAGFlow is an open-source self-hosted RAG engine with hybrid search, re-ranking and a visual agent builder, geared more toward teams.
Open WebUI
A self-hosted chat interface that talks to Ollama and any OpenAI-compatible API, so your local models get a proper front end.
Open WebUI is a self-hosted multi-user chat interface with document retrieval for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs, under a licence with a branding condition.
GPT4All
A local AI chat app with document chat built in, from Nomic AI. Stable, MIT licensed, but not updated since early 2025.
GPT4All answers questions from local files through LocalDocs in an MIT-licensed desktop app that runs on CPU, but has not been updated since February 2025.
PrivateGPT
A self-hosted API layer for building private AI applications on top of local language models.
PrivateGPT is a self-hosted API layer for document question answering on local models, aimed at developers and needing a separate inference server.
Khoj
Open-source AI second brain that researches across your documents and the web with any model.
Khoj is an AGPL-3.0 self-hostable assistant that searches your documents and the web, adding scheduled automations and custom agents.
Open Notebook
Self-hosted, open source alternative to Google's NotebookLM.
Open Notebook is an MIT-licensed self-hosted NotebookLM alternative for working with your sources, depending on the configured model provider.
Kotaemon as an alternative
Listings that name Kotaemon as an alternative.
ChatPDF
An AI tool that summarizes PDFs and answers questions about them, with citations to the source.
Kotaemon is a free open-source self-hosted app for chatting with your documents using local or hosted models, but needs a server or local setup.
Gemini Notebook
Google's AI research notebook, formerly NotebookLM, that summarizes and answers questions about your uploaded sources.
Kotaemon is an open-source, self-hosted app for chatting with your documents using local or hosted models, which needs a server or local setup.
Humata
An AI tool for asking questions about your documents, with cited answers and summaries.
Kotaemon is open source and self-hosted for chatting with your documents using local or hosted models, keeping files off a third-party cloud.
Similar software
Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.
Docling
Open source library that converts documents into AI-ready structured formats.
MinerU
A document parser that converts PDFs, Office files and scans into Markdown and JSON.
olmOCR
Open-source toolkit that uses a vision language model to turn PDFs and scans into Markdown.
Ollama
The simplest way to pull down an open language model and run it on your own machine, from one command or a desktop app.
Dify
Self-hosted platform for building AI agent workflows and RAG pipelines.
Local Deep Research
A self-hosted research assistant that runs multi-step searches with local or cloud language models.
