head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs venom
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. venom has 6,597 stars, 1,323 forks, 62 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 3,838% (259,804 vs 6,597 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; venom is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, venom 20%. Hermes Agent 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
| Hermes Agent | venom | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 6.6K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-09-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 1.3K |
| 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 venom if
- You want the venom feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and venom 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 venom
Venom v6 The next generation of WhatsApp automation. Completely rebuilt. Why Venom? Venom is not just another library. It's a complete automation platform designed from the ground up for performance, reliability, and developer experience. Built on top of proven technologies, Venom gives you full control over WhatsApp Web through a clean, intuitive API — whether you're building a simple chatbot or a large scale enterprise solution. What's new in v6 Install Requires Node.js 18+ . Chromium is downloaded automatically on install. 🧪 Nightly builds 📦 Install from source Quick Start Get a fully functional bot running…
read the full venom overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or venom more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and venom has 6,597. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and venom free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and venom under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and venom?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and venom 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 venom?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose venom if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.