head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs magentic
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. magentic has 2,428 stars, 133 forks, 50 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 10,600% (259,804 vs 2,428 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; magentic is written in Python under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, magentic 5%. Hermes Agent was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (ai, chatgpt, 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 | magentic | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 2.4K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 133 |
| 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 magentic if
- You want the magentic feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and magentic 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 magentic
magentic Seamlessly integrate Large Language Models into Python code. Use the @prompt and @chatprompt decorators to create functions that return structured output from an LLM. Combine LLM queries and tool use with traditional Python code to build complex agentic systems. Features [Structured Outputs] using pydantic models and built in python types. [Streaming] of structured outputs and function calls, to use them while being generated. [LLM Assisted Retries] to improve LLM adherence to complex output schemas. [Observability] using OpenTelemetry, with native [Pydantic Logfire integration]. [Type Annotations] to…
read the full magentic overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or magentic more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and magentic has 2,428. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and magentic free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and magentic under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and magentic?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and magentic in Python. 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 magentic?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose magentic if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.