head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs mercury-agent
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. mercury-agent has 3,768 stars, 388 forks, 60 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 6,795% (259,804 vs 3,768 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; mercury-agent is written in TypeScript under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, mercury-agent 10%. 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-agent, 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 | mercury-agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 3.8K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 388 |
| 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 mercury-agent if
- You want the mercury-agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and mercury-agent 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 mercury-agent
Soul driven AI agent with permission hardened tools, token budgets, and multi channel access. Remembers what matters. Asks before it acts. Runs 24/7 from CLI, Telegram, or Web. 31 built in tools, Kanban boards, extensible skills, SQLite backed Second Brain memory. 🔖 Current Stable: v1.2.3 English 简体中文 Quick Start One liner install (no Node.js required) — downloads the latest standalone binary for your OS: Or via npm if you already have Node.js 20+: Or install the npm package globally: First run triggers the setup wizard (name, provider, optional Telegram). After setup, Mercury opens the Ink TUI startup screen…
read the full mercury-agent overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or mercury-agent more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and mercury-agent has 3,768. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and mercury-agent free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and mercury-agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and mercury-agent?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and mercury-agent 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 mercury-agent?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose mercury-agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.