What is the difference between Qbox and QBCore?

The lineage is the key fact: Qbox forked from QBCore rather than starting fresh, which is why player data, job and gang structures, and the general shape of a server feel familiar to anyone coming from QBCore. That shared ancestry is also why Qbox is the migration people actually attempt — it is the shortest move between any two of the three major frameworks.

What changed is the foundation. QBCore historically shipped its own inventory, target, and utility resources (qb-inventory, qb-target, and so on). Qbox standardised on the ox equivalents — ox_inventory, ox_target, ox_lib for menus and callbacks, oxmysql for the database — and its core, qbx_core, requires ox_lib. Qbox also took a stricter line on server authority in the core, with fewer places where a client-sent value is written to state without the server checking it. Whether that matters for you depends on which resources you run on top; a framework's own discipline does not extend to third-party scripts.

The practical trade-off for a server owner: QBCore has the wider library of resources built directly against its conventions, and much of that library runs on Qbox through the compatibility layer, but not all of it and not always without edits. Resources written against a bridge rather than framework internals move between the two cleanly; resources that call qb-core exports directly are the ones to check. Verify the current state of both projects on their own documentation before deciding — framework maintenance status changes faster than any comparison page.