head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Frontman
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars, 11,598 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Frontman has 698 stars, 51 forks, 236 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 12,552% (88,312 vs 698 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; Frontman is written in ReScript under a custom or non-standard licence. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Frontman 7%. Frontman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (agent, artificial-intelligence, developer-tools, llm), 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 | Frontman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 88K | ★ 698 |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | ReScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 51 |
| 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 Frontman if
- You want the Frontman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches ReScript
- You evaluated both and Frontman 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 Frontman
Frontman is an open source AI coding agent that runs inside your browser and edits your project's real source files from a live view of the running application, built for product managers, designers, and frontend developers who need small frontend fixes without opening an IDE.
read the full Frontman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Frontman more popular?
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars and Frontman has 698. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and Frontman free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT, and Frontman has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between OpenHands and Frontman?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and Frontman in ReScript. 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 Frontman?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (88,312 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Frontman if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.