head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Frontman
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Frontman has 721 stars, 50 forks, 236 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 12,731% (92,511 vs 721 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%. OpenHands 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 | ★ 93K | ★ 721 |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | TypeScript | ReScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 50 |
| 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 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
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 Frontman
Let product and design ship frontend fixes without opening an IDE Frontman is an open source AI coding agent that lives in your browser. Click any element in your running app, describe the change in plain English, and Frontman edits the actual source files with instant hot reload. It sees the live DOM, component tree, computed CSS, routes, source maps, and server logs, so non technical teammates can make precise frontend fixes without guessing which file owns the UI. Docs · Next.js · Astro · Vite · Discord · Demo What You Can Ask Frontman Frontman is built for small frontend changes that usually get stuck in…
read the full Frontman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Frontman more popular?
OpenHands has 92,511 GitHub stars and Frontman has 721. 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 (92,511 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Frontman if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.