head to head · open source
claude-mem vs Codewhale
claude-mem has 94,125 GitHub stars, 8,305 forks, 186 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Codewhale has 40,995 stars, 3,564 forks, 110 open issues and last shipped yesterday. claude-mem leads on adoption by 130% (94,125 vs 40,995 stars). claude-mem is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0; Codewhale is written in Rust under MIT. claude-mem has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, Codewhale 9%. Codewhale was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| claude-mem | Codewhale | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 94K | ★ 41K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 8.3K | ⑂ 3.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick claude-mem if
- You weight community size — 94K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Codewhale if
- You want the Codewhale feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and Codewhale fits your workflow better
About claude-mem
claude mem is an Apache 2.0 TypeScript memory layer for AI coding agents that captures what an agent did during a session, compresses it with AI, and injects the relevant parts back into future sessions, built for developers running Claude Code, OpenClaw, Codex, Gemini, Hermes, Copilot, OpenCode and similar tools.
read the full claude-mem overview →
About Codewhale
Codewhale is an open source coding agent that runs in the terminal, written in Rust and released under the MIT license. It reads a project, edits files, runs commands, and checks its own work against a goal, using either a hosted model or a local model that the user chooses and connects. The project is developed in the open on GitHub, where it has gathered roughly 41,000 stars and 3,500 forks, with the repository sitting at about one year old and 110 open issues. It lives in the AI development tooling ecosystem, specifically the growing class of terminal based coding agents, and it is distributed both as a CLI bi…
read the full Codewhale overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is claude-mem or Codewhale more popular?
claude-mem has 94,125 GitHub stars and Codewhale has 40,995. claude-mem has the larger community by that measure.
Are claude-mem and Codewhale free?
Both are open source. claude-mem is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Codewhale under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between claude-mem and Codewhale?
claude-mem is written in TypeScript and Codewhale in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, claude-mem or Codewhale?
Choose claude-mem if you want the larger community (94,125 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Codewhale if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.