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Kotaemon vs PaperQA2: catalog facts
Kotaemon	PaperQA2
Free Free and open source.	Free Free and open source under the Apache 2.0 licence; model API usage may cost extra.
Web, Self-hosted	Command line
Chat with your own documents through a web interface Works with local or hosted language models	Answers include citations to the source documents Fetches paper metadata with citation counts and retraction checks
Needs a server or local setup rather than a simple installer Answer quality depends on the model you connect	Needs a language model, either through an API or run locally Setup and tuning assume comfort with Python
Self-hosted	Downloadable app
Open source	Open source
License not stated	License: Apache-2.0
Not stated if an account is needed	Not stated if an account is needed
Not stated if it works offline	Not stated if it works offline
Official website Full listing and sources Checked September 23, 2026	Official website Full listing and sources Checked October 2, 2026

Catalog facts only. Anything “not stated” is unconfirmed. Check full listings for details.