head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs askimo
Hermes Agent has 261,553 GitHub stars, 58,047 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. askimo has 541 stars, 114 forks, 15 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 48,246% (261,553 vs 541 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; askimo is written in Kotlin under AGPL-3.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, askimo 21%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (ai, chatgpt, 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
| Hermes Agent | askimo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 262K | ★ 541 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Kotlin |
| Last push | 2026-11-08 | 2026-11-06 |
| Forks | ⑂ 58K | ⑂ 114 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Hermes Agent if
- You weight community size — 262K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick askimo if
- You want the askimo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Kotlin
- You evaluated both and askimo fits your workflow better
About Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent ☤ Hermes Agent Hermes Desktop The self improving AI agent built by Nous Research. It's the only agent with a built in learning loop — it creates skills from experience, improves them during use, nudges itself to persist knowledge, searches its own past conversations, and builds a deepening model of who you are across sessions. Run it on a $5 VPS, a GPU cluster, or serverless infrastructure that costs nearly nothing when idle. It's not tied to your laptop — talk to it from Telegram while it works on a cloud VM. Use any model you want — Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, your own endpoint, and many…
read the full Hermes Agent overview →
About askimo
One app. Every AI model. Your files stay local. Chat · Search your files and the web · Run scripts · Build multi step AI workflows · Execute AI agent skills all offline capable, all on your machine. ⭐ If Askimo saves you time, a star helps others find it and keeps the project going. Star on GitHub → 📥 Download • 📖 Documentation • 💬 Discussions Why Askimo? You shouldn't have to choose between the best AI model, your privacy, and getting real work done. One app, every model. Stop juggling browser tabs. Chat with OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Grok, or a local Ollama model, switch in seconds, no copy pasting. Built as…
read the full askimo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or askimo more popular?
Hermes Agent has 261,553 GitHub stars and askimo has 541. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and askimo free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and askimo under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and askimo?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and askimo in Kotlin. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Hermes Agent or askimo?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (261,553 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose askimo if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.