head to head · open source
Paperclip vs OpenHands
Paperclip has 110,292 GitHub stars, 18,270 forks, 5,464 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands has 92,511 stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Paperclip leads on adoption by 19% (110,292 vs 92,511 stars). Paperclip is written in TypeScript under MIT; OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT. Paperclip has attracted 17% as many forks as stars, OpenHands 13%. Paperclip was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Paperclip | OpenHands | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 110K | ★ 93K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 18K | ⑂ 12K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Paperclip if
- You weight community size — 110K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick OpenHands if
- You want the OpenHands feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and OpenHands fits your workflow better
About Paperclip
Quickstart · Docs · GitHub · Discord · Twitter · Website Paperclip is the app people use to manage AI agents for work. Open source orchestration for teams of AI agents. If OpenClaw is an employee , Paperclip is the company . Paperclip is a Node.js server and React UI that orchestrates a team of AI agents to run a business. Bring your own agents, assign goals, and track work and costs from one dashboard. It looks like a task manager. Under the hood: org charts, budgets, governance, goal alignment, and agent coordination. Manage business goals, not pull requests. Works with…
read the full Paperclip overview →
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 →
More in Developer Tools
Related comparisons
More AI Assisted Coding projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the AI Assisted Coding field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Paperclip or OpenHands more popular?
Paperclip has 110,292 GitHub stars and OpenHands has 92,511. Paperclip has the larger community by that measure.
Are Paperclip and OpenHands free?
Both are open source. Paperclip is licensed under MIT and OpenHands under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Paperclip and OpenHands?
Paperclip is written in TypeScript and OpenHands 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, Paperclip or OpenHands?
Choose Paperclip if you want the larger community (110,292 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenHands if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.