head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Continue
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Continue has 36,400 stars, 5,542 forks, 951 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 154% (92,511 vs 36,400 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; Continue is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Continue 15%. OpenHands was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (agent, cli, 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
| OpenHands | Continue | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 93K | ★ 36K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 5.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenHands if
- You weight community size — 93K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Continue if
- You want the Continue 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 Continue fits your workflow better
About OpenHands
Agent Canvas The self hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations. Run OpenHands, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any ACP compatible agent across local, remote, and cloud backends. Quickstart Docs Self Hosting ACP Agents Automations Slack OpenHands Agent Canvas turns your coding agents into a self hosted, always on engineering team. It's a developer control center for starting conversations and automating everyday tasks — like generating reports that publish to Slack or automatically decomposing GitHub issues into tasks. It runs locally on your machine by default, but can connect to multiple…
read the full OpenHands overview →
About Continue
Continue Pioneering open source coding agent What is Continue? Note: The continuedev/continue repository is no longer actively maintained and is read only for all users. Continue is a coding agent available as a CLI, VS Code extension, and JetBrains plugin. Documentation To learn how to configure Continue, how it works, and how to customize it, check out the Continue Docs. Final 2.0.0 Release We polished Continue and did a final 2.0.0 release of the VS Code extension, CLI, and JetBrains plugin. This included removing anonymous telemetry, pulling out authentication, squashing bugs, and more. VS Code CLI JetBrains…
read the full Continue overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Continue more popular?
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars and Continue has 36,400. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and Continue free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT and Continue under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenHands and Continue?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and Continue 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, OpenHands or Continue?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (92,511 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Continue if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.