head to head · open source
headroom vs sepia
headroom has 73,130 GitHub stars, 5,624 forks, 643 open issues and last shipped yesterday. sepia has 2,693 stars, 178 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped yesterday. headroom leads on adoption by 2,616% (73,130 vs 2,693 stars). headroom is written in Python under Apache-2.0; sepia is written in Python under MIT. headroom has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, sepia 7%. headroom was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (claude-code, llm), 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
| headroom | sepia | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 73K | ★ 2.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.6K | ⑂ 178 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick headroom if
- You weight community size — 73K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick sepia if
- You want the sepia feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and sepia fits your workflow better
About headroom
Headroom is an Apache 2.0 Python library, local proxy, agent wrapper and MCP server that compresses tool outputs, logs, files, RAG chunks and conversation history before they reach an LLM, and it is built for developers running AI coding agents or LLM applications who want to cut token usage without changing the answers they get.
read the full headroom overview →
About sepia
sepia is a de AI writing skill that any Agent Skills compatible agent can load — 77+ agents through the Skills CLI, with native plugin packaging for Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, and Antigravity — and it is built for fiction writers and engineering teams who need prose to stop reading as machine generated.
read the full sepia overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is headroom or sepia more popular?
headroom has 73,130 GitHub stars and sepia has 2,693. headroom has the larger community by that measure.
Are headroom and sepia free?
Both are open source. headroom is licensed under Apache-2.0 and sepia under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between headroom and sepia?
headroom is written in Python and sepia in Python. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, headroom or sepia?
Choose headroom if you want the larger community (73,130 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose sepia if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.