head to head · open source
OpenHands vs rtk
OpenHands has 88,352 GitHub stars, 11,607 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rtk has 80,883 stars, 5,130 forks, 1,642 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 9% (88,352 vs 80,883 stars). OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT; rtk is written in Rust under Apache-2.0. OpenHands has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, rtk 6%. OpenHands was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (cli, 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 | rtk | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 88K | ★ 81K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 5.1K |
| 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 rtk if
- You want the rtk feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rtk 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 rtk
rtk is an Apache 2.0 Rust CLI proxy that sits between an AI coding agent and the shell, filtering and compressing command output so 60 90% fewer tokens reach the model, and it is built for developers running agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, Cursor, or Codex against real repositories.
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or rtk more popular?
OpenHands has 88,352 GitHub stars and rtk has 80,883. OpenHands has the larger community by that measure.
Are OpenHands and rtk free?
Both are open source. OpenHands is licensed under MIT and rtk under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between OpenHands and rtk?
OpenHands is written in TypeScript and rtk in Rust. 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 rtk?
Choose OpenHands if you want the larger community (88,352 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rtk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.