head to head · open source
caveman vs OpenHands
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars, 6,296 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped today. OpenHands has 89,669 stars, 11,838 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped today. caveman leads on adoption by 21% (108,615 vs 89,669 stars). caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0; OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT. caveman has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, OpenHands 13%. OpenHands was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| caveman | OpenHands | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 109K | ★ 90K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-01 | 2026-10-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 6.3K | ⑂ 12K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick caveman if
- You weight community size — 109K 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 OpenHands if
- You want the OpenHands feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenHands fits your workflow better
About caveman
why use many token when few do trick Your AI coding agent bills by the word and writes like it knows that. Caveman make it stop. ▶️ ThePrimeagen reacts: "No way this actually works" 🏆 1 on GitHub Trending · July 2026 · 🥇 1 Repository of the Day on Trendshift · April 2026 1 on Hacker News · 904 points · 366 comments · 8 Product of the Day on Product Hunt 📄 Cited in CAVEWOMAN , an Adobe Research paper that measured caveman style output cutting cost 1.4 to 2.4×, up to 3× · 🧪 Tested by JetBrains on 86 real coding tasks: "costs you nothing measurable in quality" ⚡ One command, no account, no API key. npx skills…
read the full caveman overview →
About OpenHands
OpenHands is an open source platform that provides a self hosted control center—Agent Canvas—for managing and orchestrating autonomous AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tools and AI assisted coding ecosystem, designed to turn local or remote agents into a persistent, automated engineering team. The platform supports multiple agent backends and integrates with third party services to enable scheduled or event driven automation workflows.
read the full OpenHands overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is caveman or OpenHands more popular?
caveman has 108,615 GitHub stars and OpenHands has 89,669. caveman has the larger community by that measure.
Are caveman and OpenHands free?
Both are open source. caveman is licensed under Apache-2.0 and OpenHands under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between caveman and OpenHands?
caveman is written in Go and OpenHands 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, caveman or OpenHands?
Choose caveman if you want the larger community (108,615 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose OpenHands if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.