MaxKB: review, pricing, security and alternatives

What MaxKB does

MaxKB belongs to the data and rag family: agents that query databases and company documents to answer questions or produce analyses. On our grid it ranks #3 of the 15 projects of this family listed in the directory.

You use it from: web app and API. Usable models: DeepSeek, Qwen (Alibaba), Llama (Meta), local models (Ollama, llama.cpp, vLLM…), and GPT (OpenAI). It can run on your own machine or server.

Who is MaxKB for?

It is for teams that want an AI to answer from their own documents or databases. Typical tasks people give it:

• query internal documentation in plain language
• ask a database questions without SQL
• index and summarise large file collections

It is a good candidate if you prefer doing everything in a browser, with no install, your data must stay on your machines, and you want the option of a local model, with no API fees.

Access and human control

Its documentation does not detail the access granted to the agent: check the settings before connecting it to your accounts.

We could not establish whether it asks for human approval before sensitive actions: test it first on an unimportant account or folder.

MaxKB pricing

The code is free, under the GPL-3.0 licence.

Getting started with MaxKB

1. Install it: the project ships as a Python package (install with pip or uv). The exact command is in the repository README.
2. Pick the model: an API key from a provider, or a local model if your machine has enough graphics memory (the VRAM calculator tells you).
3. Give it a first playground with nothing at stake: a test folder, a secondary account or a throwaway project. Only open your real accounts once you have seen how it behaves.
4. Give it a short, checkable task, review the result and its action log, then raise the difficulty step by step.

Security: risk level

Give it read-only access and check generated queries before any data change.

Three habits: least privilege (minimal rights, dedicated keys), human approval for irreversible actions, a sandbox for code execution. The AI agent security check reviews your setup in a few minutes.

Project activity and releases

Created on September 14, 2023, the 1Panel-dev/MaxKB repository has 23,029 stars, 3,195 forks and 17 open issues, with 7,564 commits in total. It received changes this month.

Over the last 52 weeks: 2,110 commits, an average of 40.6 per week.

76 releases in total; 27 in the last twelve months. Latest release: v2.10.8-lts, on October 22, 2026.

MaxKB vs other data and rag

GitHub stars of the best-rated open-source projects in the data and rag family. Stars measure attention, not quality: a heavily promoted project collects them fast, a specialised tool will have few.

MaxKB and other data and rag at a glance

The 7 best-ranked agents in the same family, 7 of them open source. The score out of 100 only applies to open-source projects; for proprietary services we show the published entry price. A dash marks information the documentation does not state.

How we rated it

Score: 83/100, computed only from public, verifiable data, with no subjective testing or partnership:

• Adoption 28/40: 23,029 stars on a log scale (40 points from about 200,000).
• Activity 30/30: last commit less than a month ago, 14 releases in six months, 2,110 commits in a year.
• Framework 25/30: licence, default human approval, self-hosting, model choice and documentation site.

The score does not say whether the agent will succeed at your tasks: it measures how solid the project is. The full grid is on the method page.