MaxKB
Open-source RAG and workflow platform for building enterprise agents
Overview
MaxKB (Max Knowledge Brain) is FIT2CLOUD's open-source platform for building RAG chatbots and agent workflows — document ingestion, MCP tool-use, and a visual workflow engine, self-hosted under GPLv3 with a paid Pro tier for SSO and higher limits.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 12 Jul 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- Up to 2 users
- 5 applications
- 50 knowledge bases
- Community support
- Unlimited users, apps, knowledge bases
- SSO (LDAP/OIDC/CAS)
- Slack/WeChat/DingTalk/Lark integration
- Voice Q&A + custom AI avatars
What you can produce with MaxKB
- Document upload + web crawling with auto-chunking and vectorization (RAG)
- Visual workflow engine with function library
- MCP tool-use support
- Model-agnostic — works with public and private LLMs
- Multi-modal input/output (text, image, audio, video)
- SSO via LDAP/OIDC/CAS (Pro edition)
- Slack, WeChat, DingTalk, Lark integrations (Pro edition)
- Self-hosted deployment (Docker), GPLv3 licensed
ASEAN Perspective
MaxKB in Southeast Asia
ASEAN-region availability and pricing notes coming soon. Drop the editorial team a note via /contact/ if you can supply local context (Singapore/Malaysia/Indonesia/Thailand/Vietnam).
MaxKB is one of the more credible self-hosted RAG platforms to come out of China's open-source scene — 21,000+ GitHub stars, active releases, and a straightforward path from PDF upload to a working chatbot with citations. The workflow engine and MCP tool-use put it a notch above simple document-QA wrappers; you can chain retrieval, function calls and multi-step logic without touching code.
The catch is upkeep. GPLv3 licensing is fine for internal tools but complicates redistribution, and a security audit flagged a sandbox bypass and privilege-escalation issue in past releases — patched, but a reminder that you're running your own attack surface. The free OSS edition caps you at 2 users and 5 apps, so anything beyond a pilot pushes you toward the custom-priced Pro tier. Good fit for teams that already run Docker infrastructure and want a knowledge base off a public LLM API; not a fit for anyone wanting a managed SaaS.
What people say
MaxKB has picked up roughly 21,800 stars on GitHub as of mid-2026, built and maintained by 1Panel-dev under Hangzhou-based FIT2CLOUD — the same team behind 1Panel server management and the JumpServer bastion host. It sits in a crowded field of self-hosted RAG tools (Dify, RAGFlow, FastGPT) but distinguishes itself with a genuinely usable workflow canvas rather than just a chat-over-documents demo.
A repo analysis from The Dispatch flagged governance gaps worth knowing about before you self-host: several recent pull requests were merged without proper review approval, and the release-note process hasn't been consistently followed — not disqualifying for an open-source project, but worth factoring into how much you trust unreviewed code in a knowledge-base tool that touches your documents. GitHub's security advisories for the project also list a Python sandbox LD_PRELOAD bypass and a privilege-escalation bug, both since patched in later releases; anyone deploying MaxKB should stay current on point releases.
On the product side, the free OSS edition covers document upload, web crawling, auto-chunking/vectorization, and a function library with MCP tool support — enough to stand up a working internal assistant. It caps out at 2 users and 5 applications, though, which pushes any real team deployment toward the Pro edition (custom annual pricing, self-hosted only — there's no managed cloud option). Pro adds SSO (LDAP/OIDC/CAS), voice Q&A, custom AI avatars, and integrations with Slack, WeChat, DingTalk and Lark, plus multi-route retrieval and third-party embedding.
Documentation ships in both Chinese and English, and the model-agnostic design means you're not locked into a single LLM vendor — useful for ASEAN teams juggling regional model access and data-residency requirements. The GPLv3 license is the main friction point for companies wanting to build a commercial product on top rather than just deploy it internally.
Supported document formats cover the usual office set — Markdown, TXT, DOCX, PDF, HTML, XLSX, XLS and CSV — and the web-crawling option means you're not limited to manually uploaded files for building a knowledge base. Compared to Dify or RAGFlow, reviewers tend to describe MaxKB as the more turnkey option for non-technical admins standing up a first internal chatbot, at the cost of some flexibility that heavier frameworks offer power users.
Summary of public user & expert reviews, compiled by RECATOOLS.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including MaxKB's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with MaxKB unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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