Top 13 Open Source Chatbot in 2023, How to Choose the Best AI Chatbot
In this article, we’ll explore the top open-source chatbot platforms currently available in the market. It’s important to note that the order of the list does not imply superiority of one offering over another. The best chatbot software for your specific requirements will be determined by your individual needs and circumstances. The information presented in this post aims
1. Rasa
Rasa stands out as an open-source bot-building framework that takes a unique approach, focusing on the story-based development of chatbots. It is a pioneer in the realm of open-source natural language understanding engines and has firmly established itself as a reliable framework.
At its core, Rasa emphasizes artificial intelligence, enabling developers to continually build and enhance their AI assistants. Instead of defining visual flows and intents within the platform, Rasa employs a story-centric approach. Developers create “stories,” which are training data scenarios designed to train the chatbot effectively.
Rasa offers an on-premises solution with its standard NLU (Natural Language Understanding) engine being fully open source. Additionally, Rasa X is a valuable set of tools that assist developers in reviewing conversations and refining the performance of the assistant. Moreover, Rasa provides premium features accessible through an enterprise license.
For optimal performance, Rasa benefits from a substantial amount of training data, typically derived from customer service chat logs. These logs are parsed, organized, classified, and used to train the NLU engine, resulting in more accurate and context-aware responses.
One potential challenge with the story-based approach is the difficulty in predicting the bot’s responses at any given moment since the underlying logic remains concealed (a “black box”). However, the risk of this uncertainty can be mitigated by feeding the system with extensive, high-quality training data, which leads to improved performance and more reliable outcomes.
also read :- What is ChatGPT
2. Botpress
Botpress is a fully open-source conversational AI software that offers robust support for various Natural Language Understanding (NLU) libraries.
The platform is specifically designed to streamline the process of building chatbots using visual flows and minimal training data in the form of intents, entities, and slots. This approach significantly reduces the development costs and lowers the entry barrier often imposed by extensive data requirements.
With Botpress, users can take advantage of a visual conversation builder and an emulator, enabling them to test and refine their chatbot conversations seamlessly. The built-in JavaScript code editor empowers developers to create custom actions that perform specific tasks, adding flexibility to the bot’s functionality.
The NLU module in Botpress allows defining intents, entities, and slots, which enables the conversational assistant to comprehend user inputs accurately.
Notably, Botpress actively maintains integrations with popular messaging services, including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Telegram, expanding the reach of the chatbots across various platforms.
Primarily tailored for developers seeking an open system with maximum control, Botpress also facilitates collaboration between developers and conversation designers. The visual conversation builder simplifies the process of collaboration, allowing specialists with different skill sets to work together effectively, leading to the creation of more effective conversational assistants.
For a comprehensive review of Botpress, interested individuals can refer to Chatimize.
3. Microsoft Bot Framework
The Microsoft Bot Framework (MBF) provides an open-source platform tailored for bot development.
The MBF’s approach is primarily focused on code-driven development, catering exclusively to developers. It offers developers fine-grained control over the chatbot building process and access to numerous functions and pre-built connectors.
With an array of impressive tools, the MBF streamlines the chatbot creation process and seamlessly integrates with Luis, Microsoft’s proprietary natural language understanding engine.
Furthermore, Microsoft has acquired Botkit, another open-source platform that offers a visual conversation builder with a strong emphasis on user interface (UI) actions.
However, it is crucial to note that while the MBF is open-source, its NLU engine, Luis, remains proprietary software. This aspect might raise concerns about control and access depending on the user’s requirements.
An apparent drawback of Luis being proprietary is that it cannot be installed on-premises, aligning with Microsoft’s strategy to promote its Azure platform. As a service, Luis incurs costs for each API call, which can lead to substantial monthly expenses.
4. Wit.ai
Wit.ai is an open-source chatbot framework that was acquired by Facebook in 2015. As an open-source platform, developers have the opportunity to explore existing bots and applications built using Wit.ai, which can serve as a valuable source of inspiration for their own projects.
The framework provides a well-documented open-source chatbot API, making it accessible and user-friendly for developers who are new to the platform. This ease of use enables quick and straightforward project initiation.
Given its ownership by Facebook, Wit.ai is an excellent choice if you plan to deploy your chatbot on Facebook Messenger. Facebook simplifies the deployment process, making it seamless to use Wit.ai chatbots on Messenger.
Wit.ai’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine is robust and capable, standing out favorably when compared to its competitors, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and IBM.
The platform offers an SDK available in multiple languages, including Python, Ruby, and NodeJS, facilitating a wider range of developer preferences.
Moreover, Wit.ai seamlessly integrates with various platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Slack, Wearable devices, and home automation, providing versatility in chatbot deployment options.
One potential drawback of Wit.ai is the laborious nature of the training process. It may lack the desired amount of slots and parameters, necessitating the use of business logic to handle unstated information effectively.
5. Botkit
As mentioned earlier, Botkit is now integrated into the Microsoft Bot Framework and is renowned for its developer-friendly, code-centric nature. It is just one component of a comprehensive suite of developer tools and SDKs that make up the Microsoft Bot Framework. The Bot Framework SDK serves as the foundation upon which Botkit is built, and it is available in various programming languages.
Botkit boasts an extensive array of plugins designed for different chat platforms, including Webex, Slack, Facebook Messenger, and Google Hangout, offering versatile integration options.
Recently, Botkit has introduced a visual conversation builder to facilitate chatbot development, catering to users with limited coding experience who seek greater involvement in the process.
In terms of Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Botkit relies on Luis as its underlying NLU engine. However, it provides the flexibility to integrate with other NLU engines if required, accommodating a broader range of project needs.
6. OpenDialog
OpenDialog is a robust, open-source conversational AI platform that originated in 2018.
With OpenDialog, users can efficiently deploy, integrate, and train chatbots. Its smart conversation engine allows for easy customization and seamless integration as per specific requirements. Additionally, the platform offers flexible NLU support, empowering users to leverage the best AI techniques for their unique problem-solving needs.
OpenDialog stands out with its no-code conversation designer, enabling users to swiftly design and prototype conversations without the need for coding expertise.
Moreover, the platform facilitates effective management and future-proofing of conversational AI strategies.
Open Dialog’s open-source and easily extendable architecture foster innovation, while the reusability of conversational components across solutions ensures scalability with a growing team.
Key features of OpenDialog include
- real-time STT processes
- low memory usage (less than 64MB for 20,000 words)
- ability to produce N-best/Word-graph output
- capacity to function as a server unit.
Notably, OpenDialog provides an accessible entry point into conversational application development, allowing users without prior coding experience to build their first chatbot effortlessly.
The platform is a no-code solution written in PHP and is compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS environments. OpenDialog is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, promoting an open and collaborative development approach.
Also read :- How to Use Chat GPT AI
7. Botonic
Botonic is a React framework designed specifically for building robust conversational apps, offering much more than just simple text-based chatbots. Developed with a focus on catering to developers, it provides a comprehensive full-stack serverless solution.
The framework empowers developers to create cutting-edge chatbots and modern conversational applications that function seamlessly across multiple platforms, including web, mobile, and popular messaging apps like Messenger, Whatsapp, and Telegram.
Botonic enables the creation of conversational applications that combine the best of both text interfaces (simplicity, natural language interaction) and graphical interfaces (multimedia, visual context, rich interaction). This potent combination leads to a significantly improved user experience compared to traditional chatbots that rely solely on text and Natural Language Processing (NLP).
To enhance functionality, Botonic offers an array of plugins, simplifying the integration of popular services into projects.
The framework is written in TypeScript and JavaScript, built on top of React, Serverless, and Tensorflow. Moreover, it is compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS environments.
Botonic operates under the MIT License, promoting an open and collaborative development approach.
8. Claudia Bot Builder
Claudia Bot Builder serves as an extension library for Claudia.js, facilitating the development of bots across various platforms, including Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Skype, Slack slash commands, Twilio, Kik, and GroupMe. The core objective of this open-source project is to alleviate developers from dealing with boilerplate code and common infrastructure tasks, allowing them to concentrate on the essential aspects of building the bot.
Using Claudia Bot Builder, the process of setting up webhooks for all supported platforms is automated, and developers are guided through the configuration of access, enabling a swift and seamless start to their bot-building journey.
The library streamlines messaging workflows by converting incoming messages from different platforms into a standardized format, simplifying message handling. Additionally, Claudia Bot Builder automatically packages text responses in the appropriate format for the requesting bot engine, eliminating concerns about formatting results for straightforward responses.
Claudia operates under the MIT License, adhering to an open and collaborative development approach.
9. Tock
Tock stands out as an open-source conversational AI platform, offering a comprehensive solution for creating conversational agents and bots. Unlike other platforms, Tock operates independently and does not rely on 3rd-party APIs.
Tock’s key features include the ability to build stories and leverage analytics. It comes equipped with a conversational DSL for Kotlin, Node.js, Python, and REST APIs, enabling developers to interact seamlessly with the platform. Moreover, Tock supports integration with a wide range of text and voice channels, including Messenger, WhatsApp, Google Assistant, Alexa, Twitter, and more.
The platform offers toolkits for custom web and mobile integration using React and Flutter, providing flexibility in adapting Tock to diverse applications. Additionally, Tock enables easy deployment anywhere in the cloud or on-premise with Docker, ensuring a hassle-free implementation process.
Tock is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, promoting an open and collaborative approach to AI development.
10. BotMan
BotMan is a leading open-source PHP framework designed for chatbot development. It has gained immense popularity as the most widely used PHP chatbot framework worldwide. Built with developers in mind, BotMan aims to simplify the process of creating innovative chatbots for multiple messaging platforms, including Slack, Telegram, Microsoft Bot Framework, Nexmo, HipChat, Facebook Messenger, and WeChat.
With BotMan, developers can write chatbot logic just once and seamlessly connect it to various messaging services such as Amazon Alexa, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, or even integrate it directly into their own websites.
A notable advantage of BotMan is its framework-agnostic nature, allowing developers to incorporate it into their existing codebase alongside any framework of their choice. By adopting BotMan, developers can focus on the core business logic rather than getting entangled in the complexities of framework-specific code.
The framework provides comprehensive documentation, and its codebase is written in PHP, ensuring compatibility with Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems. BotMan operates under the MIT License, embracing an open and collaborative development approach.
11. Bottender
Bottender is a powerful framework that enables the creation of conversational user interfaces on top of Messaging APIs.
The framework boasts an effortless setup, specifically optimized for real-world scenarios, featuring automatic batching of requests, and an array of intuitive APIs that simplify the development process.
Bottender significantly reduces the complexity of conversational UIs, allowing developers to design actions for each event and state within their application. By doing so, Bottender ensures the smooth execution of actions, making the code more predictable and easier to debug.
With Bottender, configuring your bot to work with various channels, enabling automatic server listening, setting up webhooks, and verifying signatures require only a few simple configurations.
Thousands of bots are powered by Bottender, a testament to its effectiveness and applicability in real-world use cases. The framework’s automatic batching of requests and other compelling features contribute to its success.
Bottender empowers developers to create applications across multiple channels without compromising on user experience. It facilitates the implementation of progressive enhancement or graceful degradation strategies for building blocks.
The framework provides functional and declarative approaches to define conversations, using familiar concepts such as routes found in web application development.
Bottender is written in TypeScript and JavaScript, making it compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems. The framework operates under the MIT License, supporting an open and collaborative development ecosystem.
12. Deep Pavlov
DeepPavlov serves as a cutting-edge open-source conversational AI framework, catering to deep learning, end-to-end dialogue systems, and chatbot development. The framework caters to both newcomers and experts, providing comprehensive and flexible tools to create production-ready conversational skills and intricate multi-skill conversational assistants.
DeepPavlov leverages advanced deep learning models, including BERT and other state-of-the-art architectures, to address classification, Named Entity Recognition (NER), Q&A, and other Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks.
An essential component of DeepPavlov is the DeepPavlov Agent, enabling the construction of industrial-grade solutions with multi-skill integration via API services.
To enhance accessibility and ease of deployment, DeepPavlov models are conveniently packed in deployable containers hosted on Nvidia NGC and Docker Hub.
The framework is written in Python and is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, encouraging an open and collaborative approach to AI development.
13. Golem
Golem presents itself as a python framework dedicated to chatbot development, catering specifically to python developers. Notably, it excels in effortlessly extracting entities from existing messages.
The framework offers its own web GUI, streamlining the testing process, and seamlessly interacts with messages from Messenger and Telegram.
Golem distinguishes itself as a language analysis technology employing a linguistic universal approach, which sets it apart from the two prevailing NLU approaches today:
- statistical approach (involving the training of artificial neural networks)
- The grammatical approach.
Golem.ai prides itself on providing a technology that is easily multilingual and doesn’t require extensive training. The AI inherently possesses a linguistic understanding common to all human languages. Its configuration primarily involves describing the expected elements’ format (action purposes or interpretation in the given context) and providing specific business vocabulary. This approach has evolved through years of experimentation to identify the simplest and most efficient means of configuring an NLU AI.
Golem is implemented in Python, rendering it compatible with Linux, Windows, and macOS. The framework operates under the GPL-3.0 License, promoting an open and collaborative development ecosystem.
How to Choose the Best Open-Source Chatbot Software for You?
Before committing your time and resources to a chatbot software, it’s crucial to determine how you intend to use it and identify the specific functionalities required for your use case. Embracing open-source solutions offers the advantage of experimentation before making a final decision.
While some companies may present various use cases for their platforms, it’s not always an exhaustive list. Thus, we highly recommend exploring chatbot forums and conducting searches related to your desired chatbot capabilities. In many cases, you’ll find others working on similar projects, and engaging with the community by asking questions can be invaluable.
A mere summary may not provide enough information to make a well-informed decision, but it serves as an excellent starting point to narrow down potential contenders and gain insights into their strengths and weaknesses.
For a more comprehensive understanding of open-source chatbots and conversational AI, consider delving into the article that provides all the essential information about Conversational AI. This will further enrich your knowledge in making the right choice for your chatbot development endeavors.
important notice In this blog Information source is from Google