OpenBuddy is an open-source family of multilingual chatbot models designed to give everyone a free, offline-capable AI assistant in their own language. Hosted on GitHub with about 1,300 stars under the Apache-2.0 license and updated through 2025, the models are built on Falcon and LLaMA and fine-tuned for conversation across many languages.
Most open chat models are strongest in English. OpenBuddy extends the base models’ vocabulary with additional common characters and enhanced token embeddings, then fine-tunes on multi-turn dialogue datasets, so the resulting models answer questions and translate fluently across English, Chinese and many other languages. The project’s stated mission is a free, open model that runs on users’ own devices regardless of language or cultural background. Model weights are published on Hugging Face and ModelScope for fast download and one-click deployment, and a community demo is available through the project’s Discord server for anyone who wants to try the models before downloading them. That combination of open weights and local execution makes OpenBuddy a practical base for multilingual products and experiments that cannot rely on cloud APIs.
OpenBuddy is free and open source under the Apache-2.0 license. The models can be downloaded and run locally at no cost; any expense is only the hardware or hosting you choose to run them on.
Developers and researchers who need an open chatbot that genuinely handles multiple languages โ especially Chinese and English together โ and hobbyists who want a capable assistant that works fully offline.