head to head · open source
herdr vs Giselle
herdr has 39,695 GitHub stars, 2,992 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped today. Giselle has 557 stars, 124 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. herdr leads on adoption by 7,027% (39,695 vs 557 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; Giselle is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, Giselle 22%. herdr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent, ai, ai-agents), 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 | Giselle | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 557 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-01 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.0K | ⑂ 124 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick herdr if
- You weight community size — 40K 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 Giselle if
- You want the Giselle feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Giselle 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 Giselle
Giselle is an open source AI app builder for agentic workflows, distributed under the Apache License 2.0 and written primarily in TypeScript. It lives in the JavaScript and TypeScript ecosystem, built around Next.js, and it describes itself as an AI agent studio that powers product delivery by enabling human AI collaboration. The project is developed in public on GitHub, has a hosted counterpart at giselles.ai, and carries topics such as agent, agent builder, agentic ai, ai agent, multiagent, and generative ai.
read the full Giselle overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or Giselle more popular?
herdr has 39,695 GitHub stars and Giselle has 557. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and Giselle free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Giselle under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and Giselle?
herdr is written in Rust and Giselle 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 Giselle?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (39,695 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Giselle if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.