head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs AstrBot
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. AstrBot has 45,662 stars, 3,350 forks, 1,516 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 469% (259,804 vs 45,662 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; AstrBot is written in Python under AGPL-3.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, AstrBot 7%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, chatgpt, llm), 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
| Hermes Agent | AstrBot | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 46K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Hermes Agent if
- You weight community size — 260K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick AstrBot if
- You want the AstrBot feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and AstrBot fits your workflow better
About Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent ☤ Hermes Agent Hermes Desktop The self improving AI agent built by Nous Research. It's the only agent with a built in learning loop — it creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It's not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM. Use any model you want — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint, and many…
read the full Hermes Agent overview →
About AstrBot
简体中文 ｜ 繁體中文 ｜ 日本語 ｜ Français ｜ Español ｜ Русский Documentation ｜ Blog ｜ Roadmap ｜ Issue Tracker ｜ Email Support AstrBot is an open source all in one Agent chatbot platform that integrates with mainstream instant messaging apps. It provides reliable and scalable conversational AI infrastructure for individuals, developers, and teams. Whether you're building a personal AI companion, intelligent customer service, automation assistant, or enterprise knowledge base, AstrBot enables you to quickly build production ready AI applications within your IM platform workflows. Key Features 1. 💯 Free & Open Source. 2. ✨ AI…
read the full AstrBot overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or AstrBot more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and AstrBot has 45,662. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and AstrBot free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and AstrBot under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and AstrBot?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and AstrBot 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, Hermes Agent or AstrBot?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose AstrBot if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.