head to head · open source
herdr vs dsh-our-free-model
herdr has 43,449 GitHub stars, 3,426 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. dsh-our-free-model has 9,555 stars, 185 forks, 133 open issues and last shipped yesterday. herdr leads on adoption by 355% (43,449 vs 9,555 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; dsh-our-free-model is written in JavaScript under MIT. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, dsh-our-free-model 2%. 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-agents, 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 | dsh-our-free-model | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 43K | ★ 9.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Rust | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-10-11 | 2026-10-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.4K | ⑂ 185 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 43K 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 dsh-our-free-model if
- You want the dsh-our-free-model feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and dsh-our-free-model 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 dsh-our-free-model
dsh our free model is a free, unlimited model access plugin for the dsh agent harness that lets developers and AI agent tinkerers use frontier models such as DeepSeek V4.1 Flash and Kimi K3 without logging in, signing up, or supplying an API key.
read the full dsh-our-free-model overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or dsh-our-free-model more popular?
herdr has 43,449 GitHub stars and dsh-our-free-model has 9,555. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and dsh-our-free-model free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and dsh-our-free-model under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and dsh-our-free-model?
herdr is written in Rust and dsh-our-free-model in JavaScript. 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 dsh-our-free-model?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (43,449 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose dsh-our-free-model if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.