head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Cline
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Cline has 71,221 stars, 7,835 forks, 1,288 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 30% (92,511 vs 71,221 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; Cline is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Cline 11%. Cline 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
| OpenHands | Cline | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 71K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 7.8K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenHands if
- You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Cline if
- You want the Cline feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Cline fits your workflow better
About OpenHands
Agent Canvas The self hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations. Run OpenHands, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any ACP compatible agent across local, remote, and cloud backends. Quickstart Docs Self Hosting ACP Agents Automations Slack OpenHands Agent Canvas turns your coding agents into a self hosted, always on engineering team. It's a developer control center for starting conversations and automating everyday tasks — like generating reports that publish to Slack or automatically decomposing GitHub issues into tasks. It runs locally on your machine by default, but can connect to multiple…
read the full OpenHands overview →
About Cline
Cline The open source coding agent in your IDE, terminal, and desktop. Docs Discord r/cline Feature Requests Join us! CLI Run Cline in your terminal. Interactive chat or fully headless for CI/CD and scripting. Learn more Desktop App Cline as a native app for macOS and Windows. Run agent sessions in any folder, schedule routines, and manage models, plugins, and MCP servers. Download for macOS and Windows VS Code Extension AI coding assistant in your editor. Create files, run commands, browse the web, and use tools with human in the loop approval. Install from VS Marketplace JetBrains Plugin The same Cline…
read the full Cline overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Cline more popular?
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars and Cline has 71,221. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and Cline free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT and Cline under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenHands and Cline?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and Cline 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, OpenHands or Cline?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (92,511 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Cline if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.