head to head · open source
OpenHands vs rtk
OpenHands has 92,457 GitHub stars, 12,320 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. rtk has 85,252 stars, 5,454 forks, 1,642 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands leads on adoption by 8% (92,457 vs 85,252 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%. rtk 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 | ★ 92K | ★ 85K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 12K | ⑂ 5.5K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick OpenHands if
- You weight community size — 92K 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
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 rtk
High performance CLI proxy that cuts up to 90% of the bash output your agent reads Website • Install • Troubleshooting • Architecture • Discord English • Francais • 中文 • 日本語 • 한국어 • Espanol • Português rtk filters and compresses command outputs before they reach your LLM context. Single Rust binary, 100+ supported commands, Full explanation: How RTK Savings Work Installation Homebrew (recommended) winget (Windows) Easiest way to install on Windows — one command, no PATH setup needed: Quick Install (Linux/macOS) Installs to /.local/bin . Add to PATH if needed…
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Frequently asked questions
Is OpenHands or rtk more popular?
OpenHands has 92,457 GitHub stars and rtk has 85,252. 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 (92,457 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rtk if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.