head to head · open source
it-tools vs herdr
it-tools has 40,640 GitHub stars, 5,432 forks, 821 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. herdr has 39,695 stars, 2,992 forks, 337 open issues and last shipped today. it-tools leads on adoption by 2% (40,640 vs 39,695 stars). it-tools is written in Vue under GPL-3.0; herdr is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. it-tools has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, herdr 8%. herdr was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (developer-tools), 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
| it-tools | herdr | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 41K | ★ 40K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Vue | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-16 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 5.4K | ⑂ 3.0K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick it-tools if
- You weight community size — 41K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Vue
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick herdr if
- You want the herdr 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 herdr fits your workflow better
About it-tools
it tools be self hostable web collection of small developer and IT utilities — converters, encoders, formatters, generators — built with Vue and TypeScript, shipped as Docker image, aimed at developers, IT people, and homelab owners who want those tools without shipping data to third party sites.
read the full it-tools overview →
About herdr
herdr is a terminal first runtime for coding agents — a single Rust binary that owns the terminals in which tools such as Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenCode and Grok run, aimed at developers who keep agents working across local and remote machines and want those sessions to survive a lost SSH connection or a closed client.
read the full herdr overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is it-tools or herdr more popular?
it-tools has 40,640 GitHub stars and herdr has 39,695. it-tools has the larger community by that measure.
Are it-tools and herdr free?
Both are open source. it-tools is licensed under GPL-3.0 and herdr under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between it-tools and herdr?
it-tools is written in Vue and herdr 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, it-tools or herdr?
Choose it-tools if you want the larger community (40,640 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose herdr if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.