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RAGFlow

Lets AI answer questions from your own documents, with citations pointing back to the sources.

What it does

RAGFlow is a RAG engine. RAG, short for retrieval-augmented generation, means the AI first looks up relevant passages in your files and then answers using them, rather than relying only on what it memorised.

It reads many kinds of files, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs, scanned copies, images and web pages. It shows how documents were split up so people can check and adjust it, and gives answers with traceable citations. Newer features can turn documents into wikis, mind maps and timelines.

It can be tried through its makers' cloud service or run on your own server with Docker.

Who it's for

Teams and businesses that want a private question-answering system over their documents.

Can I use it without coding?

With some setup. Runs with Docker on a fairly powerful machine (its makers suggest 16 GB of memory to start), or through a hosted cloud version. New to this? Start here.

Can I run it?

Cost
Free, but needs an AI accountThe software is free, but it uses an online AI service (like OpenAI or Anthropic), which usually charges for use.
Runs on
Server, Linux, Cloud
Computer
Works best on a powerful computer or one with a graphics card (GPU)
Privacy
Your choice: run it on your device or use an online service
API key
Needed. An API key is a password-like code from an online AI service. What's that?

Try it

  1. Try the hosted cloud version, or install Docker and start RAGFlow on your own server.
  2. Open RAGFlow in your web browser and sign in.
  3. Add an AI model provider and its API key on the model provider page.

Using Claude Code, Cursor or another AI coding assistant? Paste the prompt and it will walk you through the setup.New to this?

Before you install

  • Only download from the official GitHub page. Copies with similar names exist for many popular projects.
  • License (Apache-2.0): Permissive: free to use, change and share, including for business.
  • Keep your API key private. Never paste it into websites or share it, and set a spending limit with the AI service.
  • More on staying safe

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