head to head · open source
herdr vs gitdiagram
herdr has 41,644 GitHub stars, 3,219 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. gitdiagram has 17,596 stars, 1,346 forks, 43 open issues and last shipped yesterday. herdr leads on adoption by 137% (41,644 vs 17,596 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; gitdiagram is written in TypeScript under MIT. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, gitdiagram 8%. herdr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, 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
| herdr | gitdiagram | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 18K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-30 | 2026-09-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.2K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 42K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick gitdiagram if
- You want the gitdiagram feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and gitdiagram fits your workflow better
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 →
About gitdiagram
GitDiagram is an open source, MIT licensed TypeScript tool that turns any public or private GitHub repository into an interactive architecture diagram — and now into a one minute narrated explainer video — for developers, reviewers and AI agents who need to understand a codebase quickly.
read the full gitdiagram overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or gitdiagram more popular?
herdr has 41,644 GitHub stars and gitdiagram has 17,596. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and gitdiagram free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and gitdiagram under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and gitdiagram?
herdr is written in Rust and gitdiagram 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, herdr or gitdiagram?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (41,644 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose gitdiagram if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.