head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs kwant
Hermes Agent has 263,254 GitHub stars, 59,300 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped today. kwant has 534 stars, 52 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped today. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 49,199% (263,254 vs 534 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; kwant is written in Rust under AGPL-3.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 23% as many forks as stars, kwant 10%. 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-agents), 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 | kwant | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 263K | ★ 534 |
| License | MIT | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-14 | 2026-11-14 |
| Forks | ⑂ 59K | ⑂ 52 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Hermes Agent if
- You weight community size — 263K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick kwant if
- You want the kwant feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and kwant 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 kwant
Your own team of AI bots that check each other’s work before saying “done”. Website · Docs · Features · Compare · Changelog · Discussions macOS: one app for Apple silicon and Intel · Linux x86 64 (beta): .deb or AppImage · A server: binary or Docker · All downloads Free and open source. A ⭐ helps others find kwant. kwant has no token. Official X account is @kwantbot . kwant gives you a team of bots that share chats, hand work to each other with an @mention and get it done on their own, on a schedule or while you're away. Each message goes to the bot that fits, and the reply says why. Work shows up as cards on a…
read the full kwant overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or kwant more popular?
Hermes Agent has 263,254 GitHub stars and kwant has 534. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and kwant free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and kwant under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and kwant?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and kwant in Rust. 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 kwant?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (263,254 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose kwant if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.