head to head · open source
herdr vs bb
herdr has 40,874 GitHub stars, 3,128 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. bb has 3,946 stars, 553 forks, 463 open issues and last shipped yesterday. herdr leads on adoption by 936% (40,874 vs 3,946 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; bb is written in TypeScript under MIT. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, bb 14%. herdr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (claude-code, codex, devtools), 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
| herdr | bb | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 3.9K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-26 | 2026-09-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.1K | ⑂ 553 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick bb if
- You want the bb feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and bb fits your workflow better
About herdr
herdr is a terminal first runtime for coding agents — a single Rust binary that owns the terminals in which tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and Grok run, aimed at developers who keep agents working across local and remote machines and want those sessions to survive a lost SSH connection or a closed client.
read the full herdr overview →
About bb
bb is the agent IDE that builds itself: an MIT licensed TypeScript application that lets developers drive coding agents from a desktop app, a web app, a CLI, or an HTTP API, and extend the tool itself while it runs.
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or bb more popular?
herdr has 40,874 GitHub stars and bb has 3,946. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and bb free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and bb under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and bb?
herdr is written in Rust and bb 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, herdr or bb?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (40,874 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose bb if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.