head to head · open source
pi vs OpenHands
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars, 13,437 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands has 88,312 stars, 11,598 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pi leads on adoption by 21% (106,586 vs 88,312 stars). pi is written in TypeScript under MIT; OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT. pi has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, OpenHands 13%. OpenHands 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.
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Side by side
| pi | OpenHands | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 107K | ★ 88K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 13K | ⑂ 12K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 107K 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 pi
Pi is a modular agent toolkit written in TypeScript for building and running terminal based AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tooling ecosystem and provides composable packages for LLM integration, agent orchestration, and terminal UI rendering. The project centers on @earendil works/pi coding agent , an interactive CLI agent, supported by core runtime, AI abstraction, and TUI libraries.
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is pi or OpenHands more popular?
pi has 106,586 GitHub stars and OpenHands has 88,312. pi has the larger community by that measure.
Are pi and OpenHands free?
Both are open source. pi is licensed under MIT and OpenHands under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between pi and OpenHands?
pi 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, pi or OpenHands?
Choose pi if you want the larger community (106,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenHands if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.