head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs Risuai
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Risuai has 1,767 stars, 362 forks, 160 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 14,603% (259,804 vs 1,767 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; Risuai is written in TypeScript under GPL-3.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, Risuai 20%. 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, claude, 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 | Risuai | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 1.8K |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-31 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 362 |
| 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 Risuai if
- You want the Risuai feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Risuai 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 Risuai
Risuai Risuai, or Risu for short, is a cross platform AI chatting software / web application with powerful features such as multiple API support, assets in the chat, regex functions and much more. Screenshots [screenshot1]: [screenshot2]: [screenshot3]: [screenshot4]: Features Multiple API Supports : Supports OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, DeepInfra, Ooba, OpenRouter... and More! Emotion Images : Display the image of the current character, according to his/her expressions! Group Chats : Multiple characters in one chat. Plugins : Add your features and providers, and simply share. Regex Script : Modify model's output by…
read the full Risuai overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or Risuai more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and Risuai has 1,767. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and Risuai free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and Risuai under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and Risuai?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and Risuai 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 Risuai?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Risuai if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.