head to head · open source
Coder vs gentle-shell
Coder has 15,676 GitHub stars, 1,525 forks, 996 open issues and last shipped today. gentle-shell has 934 stars, 138 forks, 369 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Coder leads on adoption by 1,578% (15,676 vs 934 stars). Coder is written in Go under AGPL-3.0; gentle-shell is written in TypeScript under MIT. Coder has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, gentle-shell 15%. Coder 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
| Coder | gentle-shell | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 16K | ★ 934 |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 138 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Coder if
- You weight community size — 16K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gentle-shell if
- You want the gentle-shell feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and gentle-shell fits your workflow better
About Coder
Coder is a self hosted platform for cloud development environments and AI coding agents. It is written in Go, released under AGPL 3.0, and listed under Developer Tools / Version Control & Collaboration. Teams define workspaces with Terraform, connect through a secure Wireguard tunnel, and run environments on EC2 VMs, Kubernetes Pods, or Docker Containers.
read the full Coder overview →
About gentle-shell
gentle shell is a senior architect development harness for the Pi platform that turns a terminal coding agent into a controlled workspace with spec driven development, focused subagents, strict TDD evidence, review guardrails, and skill discovery.
read the full gentle-shell overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Coder or gentle-shell more popular?
Coder has 15,676 GitHub stars and gentle-shell has 934. Coder has the larger community by that measure.
Are Coder and gentle-shell free?
Both are open source. Coder is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and gentle-shell under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Coder and gentle-shell?
Coder is written in Go and gentle-shell 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, Coder or gentle-shell?
Choose Coder if you want the larger community (15,676 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose gentle-shell if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.