head to head · open source
OpenHands vs Orca
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars, 11,598 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Orca has 71,017 stars, 4,642 forks, 5,801 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 24% (88,312 vs 71,017 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; Orca is written in TypeScript under MIT. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, Orca 7%. Orca was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (cli), 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 | Orca | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 88K | ★ 71K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 4.6K |
| 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 Orca if
- You want the Orca feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Orca 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 Orca
Orca is an agent desktop environment (ADE) that runs multiple AI coding agents in parallel, each in its own isolated git worktree. It unifies workflow, monitoring, and collaboration around AI assisted coding across desktop, mobile, and remote runtimes. Built for developers who rely on several AI coding tools simultaneously, Orca eliminates context switching by tracking all agents and their outputs in one place.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or Orca more popular?
OpenHands has 88,312 GitHub stars and Orca has 71,017. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and Orca free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT and Orca under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenHands and Orca?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and Orca 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 Orca?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (88,312 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Orca if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.