Dify vs RAGFlow
Dify and RAGFlow both let you build chat and agent apps over your documents with a visual editor, and both can be self-hosted, but they start from opposite ends. Dify is a general LLM app builder (workflows, agents, a prompt IDE, an API for every app) where RAG is one part. RAGFlow is a retrieval engine first, built around parsing messy PDFs, tables and scans well, with agents added on top. If your answers depend on getting complex documents right, try RAGFlow; if you're building many kinds of apps, Dify.
Licenses and self-hosting
RAGFlow is plain Apache-2.0. Dify uses its own license based on Apache 2.0 with two extra conditions: you need Dify's written permission to run a multi-tenant service from its code, and you can't remove the logo or copyright in its frontend. The license counts each workspace as a tenant, so a single-workspace internal deployment is fine, while anyone hosting Dify for several customers needs to ask first.
The hardware gap is large. Dify asks for at least 2 CPU cores and 4 GiB of RAM. RAGFlow recommends 4 cores, 16 GB of RAM and 50 GB of disk, Docker 24 or newer, and its compose stack brings up Elasticsearch (or Infinity), MySQL, MinIO, NATS and Kvrocks. RAGFlow's DeepDoc does layout analysis, OCR and table recognition on the CPU in the open-source 1.0 release, which is where its document quality comes from. RAGFlow is at 1.0 release candidates right now.
Hosted plans
Dify Cloud's free Sandbox gives 200 message credits, 5 apps and 50 knowledge documents. Professional is $590 and Team $1,590 per workspace per year.
RAGFlow Cloud's free plan gives 5 apps, 0.1 GB of storage and 500 credits a month, without an API key. Starter (50 apps, 5 GB, API key) is listed at both $29 and $59 a month, and Pro (unlimited apps, 50 GB) at both $129 and $259, with nothing saying which price applies, so check at checkout. Enterprise adds bring-your-own-cloud and on-premises deployment.
Agents and tools
Dify's agents get their own sandbox to run commands and handle files, and can use tools from its marketplace, MCP servers or your own APIs. RAGFlow's agent side centers on agentic retrieval: multi-step searches for hard questions, with thinking modes from Low to Ultra.
Dify: Pick Dify if you want one platform for chatbots, workflows and agents on modest hardware, and you won't resell it as a multi-tenant service.
RAGFlow: Pick RAGFlow if answer quality hinges on parsing complex PDFs and tables, you want a plain Apache-2.0 license, and you can give it 16 GB of RAM.
Facts checked Oct 18, 2026 against 5 sources
Which one should you try?
Dify
FreemiumBest for Teams building RAG, chatbot or agent apps with a visual builder
RAGFlow
FreemiumBest for Teams requiring strong document fidelity and structure-aware parsing
Pricing, capabilities and platforms side by side. Prices are as of the "Pricing checked" date in the table.
Dify
LLM app platform with visual workflows, RAG, agents and app APIs. Free Sandbox and self-hosted Community edition.
RAGFlow
Open-source RAG engine with deep document understanding, hybrid search, and agentic workflow orchestration.
| Attribute | Dify | RAGFlow |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Price | Free Sandbox; Professional $590/workspace/year; Team $1,590/workspace/year (annual billing) | $29/mo |
| Pricing checked | Oct 17, 2026 | Jun 11, 2026 |
| Free trial | Not stated | Not stated |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Has API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted option | Yes | Yes |
| Platforms | Dify Cloud (web); self-hosted with Docker Compose (min. 2 CPU cores, 4 GiB RAM) | Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, macOS, cloud (cloud.ragflow.io) |
| Released | — | 2024-04 |
| Pros |
|
|
| Cons |
|
|
Made up your mind?
Dify
FreemiumBest for Teams building RAG, chatbot or agent apps with a visual builder
RAGFlow
FreemiumBest for Teams requiring strong document fidelity and structure-aware parsing
Specs come from each tool's own site and docs (how we test). AIDiveForge is editorially independent.