head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs mercury-agent
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars, 4,978 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped today. mercury-agent has 3,160 stars, 340 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 1,546% (52,003 vs 3,160 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; mercury-agent is written in TypeScript under MIT. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, mercury-agent 11%. Cherry Studio was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agent), 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
| Cherry Studio | mercury-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 3.2K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 340 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Cherry Studio if
- You weight community size — 52K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick mercury-agent if
- You want the mercury-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mercury-agent fits your workflow better
About Cherry Studio
Cherry Studio is a cross platform desktop application for interacting with large language models, built in TypeScript under the AGPL 3.0 license. It operates in the AI interaction and interfaces ecosystem, providing a unified interface to access cloud hosted models (OpenAI, Gemini, Anthropic), web services (Claude, Poe, Perplexity), and locally hosted models via Ollama or LM Studio.
read the full Cherry Studio overview →
About mercury-agent
mercury agent is an open source AI agent written in TypeScript and licensed under MIT. It lives in the AI & Machine Learning / AI Interaction & Interfaces ecosystem, with topics ai agent, ai assistant, and llm. The project provides a soul driven agent that uses tools, keeps memory, and connects through CLI, Telegram, or Web.
read the full mercury-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or mercury-agent more popular?
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars and mercury-agent has 3,160. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and mercury-agent free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and mercury-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and mercury-agent?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and mercury-agent 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, Cherry Studio or mercury-agent?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (52,003 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose mercury-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.