head to head · open source
herdr vs LockKnife
herdr has 41,998 GitHub stars, 3,259 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped yesterday. LockKnife has 542 stars, 120 forks, 3 open issues and last shipped 23 days ago. herdr leads on adoption by 7,649% (41,998 vs 542 stars). herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; LockKnife is written in Python under GPL-3.0. herdr has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, LockKnife 22%. 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 | LockKnife | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 42K | ★ 542 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Python |
| Last push | 2026-10-02 | 2026-09-10 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.3K | ⑂ 120 |
| 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 LockKnife if
- You want the LockKnife feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and LockKnife 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 LockKnife
LockKnife is a unified Android security research toolkit that gives forensic investigators, penetration testers, and reverse engineers a case driven TUI workspace and a headless CLI for extraction, credential recovery, APK analysis, runtime inspection, and reporting from one framework.
read the full LockKnife overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is herdr or LockKnife more popular?
herdr has 41,998 GitHub stars and LockKnife has 542. herdr has the larger community by that measure.
Are herdr and LockKnife free?
Both are open source. herdr is licensed under Apache-2.0 and LockKnife under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between herdr and LockKnife?
herdr is written in Rust and LockKnife 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, herdr or LockKnife?
Choose herdr if you want the larger community (41,998 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose LockKnife if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.