head to head · open source
Hermes Agent vs zeptoclaw
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars, 57,202 forks, 41,784 open issues and last shipped yesterday. zeptoclaw has 652 stars, 98 forks, 54 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Hermes Agent leads on adoption by 39,747% (259,804 vs 652 stars). Hermes Agent is written in Python under MIT; zeptoclaw is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. Hermes Agent has attracted 22% as many forks as stars, zeptoclaw 15%. 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 | zeptoclaw | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 260K | ★ 652 |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-10-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 57K | ⑂ 98 |
| 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 zeptoclaw if
- You want the zeptoclaw feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and zeptoclaw 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 zeptoclaw
ZeptoClaw Fast, small, secure, and local first personal AI assistant infrastructure. ZeptoClaw is one Rust binary for running personal AI agents locally, at the edge, or on a VPS — with tools, memory, channels, providers, and sandboxed autonomy built in. We studied the best AI assistants — and their tradeoffs: OpenClaw's integrations without the large TypeScript app footprint, NanoClaw's container isolated simplicity without narrowing to a tiny assistant core, NemoClaw's OpenShell guardrails without the Docker/k3s footprint, and PicoClaw's edge efficiency with Rust's safety and runtime controls. Why ZeptoClaw We…
read the full zeptoclaw overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Hermes Agent or zeptoclaw more popular?
Hermes Agent has 259,804 GitHub stars and zeptoclaw has 652. Hermes Agent has the larger community by that measure.
Are Hermes Agent and zeptoclaw free?
Both are open source. Hermes Agent is licensed under MIT and zeptoclaw under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Hermes Agent and zeptoclaw?
Hermes Agent is written in Python and zeptoclaw in Rust. 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 zeptoclaw?
Choose Hermes Agent if you want the larger community (259,804 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose zeptoclaw if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.