head to head · open source
Orca vs caveman
Orca has 125,169 GitHub stars, 7,937 forks, 5,801 open issues and last shipped today. caveman has 120,139 stars, 7,002 forks, 155 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Orca leads on adoption by 4% (125,169 vs 120,139 stars). Orca is written in TypeScript under MIT; caveman is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Orca has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, caveman 6%. Orca was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Orca | caveman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 125K | ★ 120K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-15 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.9K | ⑂ 7.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Orca if
- You weight community size — 125K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick caveman if
- You want the caveman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and caveman fits your workflow better
About Orca
Orca 中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Español · Français · Português The AI Orchestrator for 100x builders. Run Codex, ClaudeCode, OpenCode or Pi side by side — each in its own worktree, tracked in one place. Download Orca Features Mobile Companion Monitor and steer your agents from your phone — get notified when an agent finishes and send follow ups from anywhere. iOS App Store · TestFlight · Android APK 0.0.48 · Docs → Parallel Worktrees Fan one prompt across five agents, each in its own isolated git worktree — compare the results and merge the winner. Docs → Terminal Splits Ghostty class terminals with WebGL rendering…
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 →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More AI Assisted Coding projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Assisted Coding field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Orca or caveman more popular?
Orca has 125,169 GitHub stars and caveman has 120,139. Orca has the larger community by that measure.
Are Orca and caveman free?
Both are open source. Orca is licensed under MIT and caveman under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Orca and caveman?
Orca is written in TypeScript and caveman in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Orca or caveman?
Choose Orca if you want the larger community (125,169 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose caveman if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.