head to head · open source
OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent
OpenClaw has 393,747 GitHub stars, 82,755 forks, 6,671 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Hermes Agent has 259,804 stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenClaw leads on adoption by 52% (393,747 vs 259,804 stars). OpenClaw is written in TypeScript under MIT; Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT. OpenClaw has attracted 21% as many forks as stars, Hermes Agent 22%. OpenClaw was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai), 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
| OpenClaw | Hermes Agent | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 394K | ★ 260K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 83K | ⑂ 57K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenClaw if
- You weight community size — 394K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Hermes Agent if
- You want the Hermes Agent feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Hermes Agent fits your workflow better
About OpenClaw
OpenClaw 🦞 — Your assistant, on your devices, in your chats OpenClaw is an open source AI assistant that runs on your own computer and meets you in the channels you already use: Discord, iMessage, Slack, Teams, Telegram, WhatsApp, and 20+ more, plus native apps for macOS, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux. One Gateway runs it as a personal assistant on a laptop or as a shared team deployment; configuration is the only difference. Yours, with no catch. State, memory, and credentials live on your hardware. Models and agent harnesses (Claude, Codex, local models) are plugins you can swap without changing anything…
read the full OpenClaw overview →
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenClaw or Hermes Agent more popular?
OpenClaw has 393,747 GitHub stars and Hermes Agent has 259,804. OpenClaw has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenClaw and Hermes Agent free?
Both are open source. OpenClaw is licensed under MIT and Hermes Agent under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenClaw and Hermes Agent?
OpenClaw is written in TypeScript and Hermes Agent 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, OpenClaw or Hermes Agent?
Choose OpenClaw if you want the larger community (393,747 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Hermes Agent if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.