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Kotaemon

RAG-based document QA with multi-user support and agent reasoning

open sourceupdated Jul 8, 2026

Kotaemon is an open-source RAG-powered document question-answering interface backed by Cinnamon AI. It supports multi-user workspaces with access controls, advanced retrieval pipelines including hybrid search and knowledge graph extraction, and agentic reasoning for complex multi-step queries. The web UI handles PDFs, Office documents, and images with citations pointing to exact source passages, making it suitable for both individual research and team knowledge management.

Kotaemon provides a production-ready web interface for document question-answering powered by Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Unlike simpler RAG demos, it implements multi-user authentication with workspace isolation, letting organizations deploy a shared knowledge base where different teams maintain separate document collections with appropriate access controls. The retrieval pipeline supports multiple strategies including dense vector search, sparse BM25 matching, and hybrid combinations that balance semantic understanding with keyword precision.

The agentic reasoning mode enables complex multi-step queries that require synthesizing information across multiple documents or performing intermediate reasoning before generating final answers. Citation support links every response to specific source passages with page numbers and highlighted excerpts, giving users confidence in the accuracy of generated answers. Document processing handles PDFs with OCR for scanned pages, Microsoft Office formats, and images with text extraction, covering the document types commonly found in enterprise knowledge bases.

Backed by Cinnamon AI, a well-funded Japanese technology company, Kotaemon has grown to over 25,000 GitHub stars with 200,000+ Docker pulls. The Apache 2.0 license allows unrestricted commercial use, and the Docker-based deployment provides a straightforward path to self-hosted operation. Human-in-the-loop feedback mechanisms let users rate answer quality, creating a feedback signal for continuous improvement of retrieval and generation quality over time.

Pricing

Free and open source under Apache 2.0

Platforms

Docker on any server; web-based interface

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FAQ

What is Kotaemon?

Kotaemon is an open-source RAG-powered document question-answering interface backed by Cinnamon AI. It supports multi-user workspaces with access controls, advanced retrieval pipelines including hybrid search and knowledge graph extraction, and agentic reasoning for complex multi-step queries. The web UI handles PDFs, Office documents, and images with citations pointing to exact source passages, making it suitable for both individual research and team knowledge management.

Is Kotaemon free?

Yes — Kotaemon is open source and free to use. Free and open source under Apache 2.0

Is Kotaemon open source?

Yes — Kotaemon is open source.

What are the best Kotaemon alternatives?

The top editor-verified Kotaemon alternatives are Memvid, Graphiti, Ragie.