head to head · open source
Cherry Studio vs waku-agent
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars, 4,978 forks, 1,514 open issues and last shipped today. waku-agent has 1,795 stars, 359 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Cherry Studio leads on adoption by 2,797% (52,003 vs 1,795 stars). Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript under AGPL-3.0; waku-agent is written in Python under MIT. Cherry Studio has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, waku-agent 20%. 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 | waku-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 52K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.0K | ⑂ 359 |
| 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 waku-agent if
- You want the waku-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and waku-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 waku-agent
waku agent is a local first, MIT licensed Python AI agent harness for developers who want an assistant whose loop, memory and evaluation code they can read and own, rather than a hosted assistant that keeps those parts out of sight.
read the full waku-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Cherry Studio or waku-agent more popular?
Cherry Studio has 52,003 GitHub stars and waku-agent has 1,795. Cherry Studio has the larger community by that measure.
Are Cherry Studio and waku-agent free?
Both are open source. Cherry Studio is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and waku-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Cherry Studio and waku-agent?
Cherry Studio is written in TypeScript and waku-agent 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, Cherry Studio or waku-agent?
Choose Cherry Studio if you want the larger community (52,003 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose waku-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.