head to head · open source
ECC vs herdr
ECC has 261,896 GitHub stars, 39,186 forks, 228 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. herdr has 39,446 stars, 2,974 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ECC leads on adoption by 564% (261,896 vs 39,446 stars). ECC is written in JavaScript under MIT; herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. ECC has attracted 15% as many forks as stars, herdr 8%. herdr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai-agents, claude-code, developer-tools), 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
| ECC | herdr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 262K | ★ 39K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | JavaScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 39K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ECC if
- You weight community size — 262K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick herdr if
- You want the herdr feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and herdr fits your workflow better
About ECC
ECC is an MIT licensed open source agent harness performance optimization system that gives AI coding agents a coordinated engineering workflow — plan, test, implement, review, verify, remember, improve — for developers working in Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Cursor, and other harnesses.
About herdr
herdr is a terminal first runtime for coding agents — a single Rust binary that owns the terminals in which tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and Grok run, aimed at developers who keep agents working across local and remote machines and want those sessions to survive a lost SSH connection or a closed client.
read the full herdr overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is ECC or herdr more popular?
ECC has 261,896 GitHub stars and herdr has 39,446. ECC has the larger community by that measure.
Are ECC and herdr free?
Both are open source. ECC is licensed under MIT and herdr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between ECC and herdr?
ECC is written in JavaScript and herdr 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, ECC or herdr?
Choose ECC if you want the larger community (261,896 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose herdr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.