Dify vs PrivateGPT
Dify
dify.aiPrivateGPT
privategpt.devSide by side
| Figure | Dify | PrivateGPT |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | $49.17/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | Yes | — |
| Web | Yes | Yes |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 11 | 1 |
| Spec score · Retrieval-Augmented Generation Tools | 9.4 (#1) | 8.6 (#4) |
| Integrations | The Marketplace provides model providers, tools, data sources, MCP integrations, and reusable plugins, with support for custom definitions. | Documented integration guides cover Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Claude for Microsoft 365, and OpenCode. |
| Purpose | Dify is an open-source platform for building AI applications with agentic workflows, RAG pipelines, model management, observability, and tools. | PrivateGPT provides an open-source API layer for building private AI applications on your own infrastructure. |
| Retrieval | Knowledge Pipeline supports semantic, keyword, hybrid, and reranked retrieval with metadata filters and citations. | The API supports file and artifact ingestion and retrieval with citations. |
| Support | Sandbox support is community and help documentation, while Professional and Team include priority email support. | The maker links to a community Discord for users. |
Plans
Dify
- CommunityFree
- CommunityFree
- SandboxFree
- SandboxFree
- Professional$59 a month
- Team$159 a month
- Professional$590 a year
- Professional$590 a year
- Team$1,590 a year
- Team$1,590 a year
In their own words
Dify
Dify is an open-source platform for building AI applications with agentic workflows, retrieval pipelines, model management, observability, and tools. Workflow Studio provides a visual canvas for model calls, knowledge retrieval, tools, code, branching, triggers, and human review. Workflows can start from user input, API calls, schedules, webhooks, plugin events, or uploaded payloads. Knowledge Pipeline turns files, online documents, drives, crawlers, and web content into searchable knowledge bases with metadata and citations. Retrieval supports semantic, keyword, hybrid, and reranked methods with metadata filters. Applications can be published as hosted web apps, website embeds, API endpoints, or MCP servers. Dify connects to providers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, and xAI, while its Marketplace lists more than 200 tools. Community Edition is self-hostable with Docker; Enterprise can run in a customer VPC, on-premises, or an air-gapped network. Sandbox and Community are free. Professional costs $590 a year per workspace; Team costs $1,590 a year per workspace.
PrivateGPT
PrivateGPT is a free, open-source API layer for building private AI applications on your own infrastructure. It does not run models itself: it connects to a separate OpenAI-compatible inference server, which can be local or remote. The Messages API supports streaming, asynchronous processing, and token counting. Document workflows include file and artifact ingestion, retrieval with citations, and tools for querying databases and analyzing tabular data. The documented capabilities also include web search and extraction, code execution, custom tools, and MCP connectors. A browser workbench at `/ui` can be used for demos and inspecting API requests, but it stores chats and settings in browser localStorage and has no access control; the documentation describes it as a local demonstrator. PrivateGPT can be installed as a Python package, from source, or with Docker, and runs as a local server. Package installation requires Python 3.11; Python 3.10 and 3.12 or later are unsupported. Platforms include Linux, macOS, Windows, web, API, and self-hosted environments.