head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Continue
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars, 11,598 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Continue has 35,946 stars, 5,395 forks, 951 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. OpenHands leads on adoption by 146% (88,312 vs 35,946 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 | ★ 88K | ★ 36K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-16 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 5.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenHands if
- You weight community size — 88K 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
OpenHands is an open source platform that provides a self hosted control center—Agent Canvas—for managing and orchestrating autonomous AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tools and AI assisted coding ecosystem, designed to turn local or remote agents into a persistent, automated engineering team. The platform supports multiple agent backends and integrates with third party services to enable scheduled or event driven automation workflows.
read the full OpenHands overview →
About Continue
Continue is an open source coding agent designed to assist developers directly within their IDE or terminal. It operates as a CLI tool, VS Code extension, and JetBrains plugin, enabling natural language interaction with codebases to generate, edit, and explain code. The project lives in the AI assisted developer tools ecosystem and is built with TypeScript under the Apache 2.0 license.
read the full Continue overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Continue more popular?
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars and Continue has 35,946. 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 (88,312 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Continue if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.