head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs kelivo
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. kelivo has 4,405 stars, 505 forks, 467 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 5,798% (259,804 vs 4,405 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; kelivo is written in Dart under AGPL-3.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, kelivo 11%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai, 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 | kelivo | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 4.4K |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Dart |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 505 |
| 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 kelivo if
- You want the kelivo feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You evaluated both and kelivo 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 kelivo
Kelivo An open source LLM client for mobile and desktop. Use every major model in one app, give it a workspace to get real work done, and keep your data on your own device. Website · User Guide · Download · Report an Issue English · 简体中文 💡 Overview Kelivo is a cross platform LLM client built with Flutter for Android, iOS, macOS, Windows and Linux. Connect your own API keys or sign in with a supported subscription, and switch between OpenAI, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, OpenRouter and any OpenAI compatible service without switching apps. Kelivo goes beyond chat. Models can search the web, call MCP servers, follow…
read the full kelivo overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or kelivo more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and kelivo has 4,405. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and kelivo free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and kelivo under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and kelivo?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and kelivo in Dart. 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 kelivo?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kelivo if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.