head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs BotFramework-WebChat
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. BotFramework-WebChat has 1,786 stars, 1,600 forks, 523 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 14,447% (259,804 vs 1,786 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; BotFramework-WebChat is written in HTML under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, BotFramework-WebChat 90%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | BotFramework-WebChat | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | HTML |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 1.6K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Hermes Agent if
- You weight community size — 260K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick BotFramework-WebChat if
- You want the BotFramework-WebChat feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches HTML
- You evaluated both and BotFramework-WebChat 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 BotFramework-WebChat
Click here to find out what is new in Web Chat Bot Framework Web Chat This repository contains code for the Bot Framework Web Chat component. The Bot Framework Web Chat component is a highly customizable web based client for the Bot Framework v4 SDK. The Bot Framework SDK v4 enables developers to model conversation and build sophisticated bot applications. This repository is part of the Microsoft Bot Framework a comprehensive framework for building enterprise grade conversational AI experiences. Web Chat supports Content Security Policy (CSP). Web developers are recommended to enable CSP to improve security and…
read the full BotFramework-WebChat overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or BotFramework-WebChat more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and BotFramework-WebChat has 1,786. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and BotFramework-WebChat free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and BotFramework-WebChat under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and BotFramework-WebChat?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and BotFramework-WebChat in HTML. 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 BotFramework-WebChat?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose BotFramework-WebChat if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.