head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Aider
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Aider has 49,910 stars, 5,128 forks, 1,860 open issues and last shipped 6 months ago. OpenHands leads on adoption by 85% (92,511 vs 49,910 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; Aider is written in Python under Apache-2.0. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Aider 10%. OpenHands was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (chatgpt, cli, openai), 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
| OpenHands | Aider | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 50K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-05-22 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenHands if
- You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Aider if
- You want the Aider feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Aider fits your workflow better
About OpenHands
Agent Canvas The self hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations. Run OpenHands, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any ACP compatible agent across local, remote, and cloud backends. Quickstart Docs Self Hosting ACP Agents Automations Slack OpenHands Agent Canvas turns your coding agents into a self hosted, always on engineering team. It's a developer control center for starting conversations and automating everyday tasks — like generating reports that publish to Slack or automatically decomposing GitHub issues into tasks. It runs locally on your machine by default, but can connect to multiple…
read the full OpenHands overview →
About Aider
AI Pair Programming in Your Terminal Aider lets you pair program with LLMs to start a new project or build on your existing codebase. Features Cloud and local LLMs Aider works best with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1 & Chat V3, OpenAI o1, o3 mini & GPT 4o, but can connect to almost any LLM, including local models. Maps your codebase Aider makes a map of your entire codebase, which helps it work well in larger projects. 100+ code languages Aider works with most popular programming languages: python, javascript, rust, ruby, go, cpp, php, html, css, and dozens more. Git integration Aider automatically commits…
read the full Aider overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Aider more popular?
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars and Aider has 49,910. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and Aider free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT and Aider under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenHands and Aider?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and Aider in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, OpenHands or Aider?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (92,511 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Aider if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.