head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs NanoClaw
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. NanoClaw has 31,073 stars, 12,681 forks, 1,102 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 736% (259,804 vs 31,073 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; NanoClaw is written in TypeScript under MIT. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, NanoClaw 41%. 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-agents, claude-code), 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 | NanoClaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 31K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 13K |
| 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 NanoClaw if
- You want the NanoClaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and NanoClaw 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 NanoClaw
An AI assistant that runs agents securely in their own containers. Lightweight, built to be easily understood and completely customized for your needs. nanoclaw.dev • docs • 中文 • 日本語 • 한국어 • • Agents in Slack: one app per agent Setup provisions each agent its own Slack app: manifest, avatar, and workspace install, no tokens to paste. Spawn teammates from chat: every one gets its own bot identity, container, and memory, with shared rooms and canvases. Why I Built NanoClaw OpenClaw is an impressive project, but I wouldn't have been able to sleep if I had given complex software I didn't understand full access to my…
read the full NanoClaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or NanoClaw more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and NanoClaw has 31,073. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and NanoClaw free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and NanoClaw under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and NanoClaw?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and NanoClaw 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 NanoClaw?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose NanoClaw if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.