head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs cindy
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. cindy has 9,009 stars, 1,086 forks, 1,390 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 2,784% (259,804 vs 9,009 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; cindy is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, cindy 12%. 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-agent, claude-code, codex, 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 | cindy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 1.1K |
| 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 cindy if
- You want the cindy 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 cindy 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 cindy
English · 简体中文 🌐 cindy.app · ⬇️ Download Cindy is an open source AI agent that works out of the box. She brings multiple harnesses, models and tools into one agent that finishes real work in your projects and apps. Ready from day one, yours to shape over time. Cindy runs locally on your own machine, using your real files and logged in apps. The first supported harnesses are Claude Code and Codex — more are being added, and a native harness is in the works. Models and harnesses mix freely and can switch mid task while your workspace, memory, skills and tools stay continuous; one task can even be planned…
read the full cindy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or cindy more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and cindy has 9,009. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and cindy free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and cindy under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and cindy?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and cindy 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, Hermes Agent or cindy?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose cindy if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.