head to head · open source
agent-orchestrator vs happier
agent-orchestrator has 12,277 GitHub stars, 1,705 forks, 711 open issues and last shipped today. happier has 1,706 stars, 152 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped today. agent-orchestrator leads on adoption by 620% (12,277 vs 1,706 stars). agent-orchestrator is written in Go under Apache-2.0; happier is written in TypeScript under MIT. agent-orchestrator has attracted 14% as many forks as stars, happier 9%. agent-orchestrator was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent-ide, agent-orchestration, claude-code), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| agent-orchestrator | happier | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 12K | ★ 1.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-23 | 2026-09-23 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.7K | ⑂ 152 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick agent-orchestrator if
- You weight community size — 12K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick happier if
- You want the happier feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and happier fits your workflow better
About agent-orchestrator
Agent Orchestrator is an open source desktop workspace for running and supervising teams of coding agents, written in Go and released under the Apache 2.0 license. It lives in the agent orchestration ecosystem, alongside the coding harnesses it drives, and it is distributed as a local application rather than as a hosted service. The project describes itself as a place to plan, run, and supervise coding agents from one place, giving every coding task its own agent, workspace, and feedback loop.
read the full agent-orchestrator overview →
About happier
Happier is an open source, MIT licensed control room for coding agents: it runs Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi and others in parallel on your own machines, and lets you approve, steer, review and commit from web, desktop and mobile clients that are fully end to end encrypted.
read the full happier overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is agent-orchestrator or happier more popular?
agent-orchestrator has 12,277 GitHub stars and happier has 1,706. agent-orchestrator has the larger community by that measure.
Are agent-orchestrator and happier free?
Both are open source. agent-orchestrator is licensed under Apache-2.0 and happier under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between agent-orchestrator and happier?
agent-orchestrator is written in Go and happier in TypeScript. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, agent-orchestrator or happier?
Choose agent-orchestrator if you want the larger community (12,277 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose happier if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.