head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs k-dense-byok
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. k-dense-byok has 1,421 stars, 189 forks, 7 open issues and last shipped 18 days ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 18,183% (259,804 vs 1,421 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; k-dense-byok is written in TypeScript under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, k-dense-byok 13%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agent), 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 | k-dense-byok | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 1.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 189 |
| 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 k-dense-byok if
- You want the k-dense-byok feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and k-dense-byok 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 k-dense-byok
K Dense BYOK 🎥 Webinar recording: Getting Started with K Dense BYOK An online walkthrough of installing Kady and running your first research task, with live Q&A. 👉 Watch the recording on YouTube Your own AI research assistant, running on your computer, powered by the accounts and API keys you choose. K Dense BYOK (Bring Your Own Keys) is a free, open source app that gives you Kady — an AI research assistant for scientists in any field. Describe a task in plain language — analyze this dataset , review my manuscript , search the literature , build this figure — and Kady works through it in a complete research…
read the full k-dense-byok overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or k-dense-byok more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and k-dense-byok has 1,421. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and k-dense-byok free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and k-dense-byok under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and k-dense-byok?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and k-dense-byok 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 k-dense-byok?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose k-dense-byok if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.