head to head · open source
openhuman vs Pearl
openhuman has 39,904 GitHub stars, 3,942 forks, 189 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Pearl has 1,095 stars, 181 forks, 40 open issues and last shipped 5 months ago. openhuman leads on adoption by 3,544% (39,904 vs 1,095 stars). openhuman is written in Rust under GPL-3.0; Pearl is written in TypeScript under Apache-2.0. openhuman has attracted 10% as many forks as stars, Pearl 17%. openhuman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (ai-agents), 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
| openhuman | Pearl | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 40K | ★ 1.1K |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-04-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 3.9K | ⑂ 181 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick openhuman if
- You weight community size — 40K stars and counting
- You want the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Pearl if
- You want the Pearl feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Pearl fits your workflow better
About openhuman
OpenHuman is an open source, GPL 3.0 licensed agent harness written in Rust and shipped as a Tauri desktop application, aimed at individuals who want a personal AI assistant whose memory, orchestration, and research tooling run local first on their own machine.
read the full openhuman overview →
About Pearl
Bubble Lab is an open core, TypeScript workflow engine that powers the Slack native Bubble Lab platform and its AI assistant Pearl, and it is aimed at teams that want operational work automated inside Slack as well as at developers and organisations that want to host that same execution engine on their own infrastructure.
read the full Pearl overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is openhuman or Pearl more popular?
openhuman has 39,904 GitHub stars and Pearl has 1,095. openhuman has the larger community by that measure.
Are openhuman and Pearl free?
Both are open source. openhuman is licensed under GPL-3.0 and Pearl under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between openhuman and Pearl?
openhuman is written in Rust and Pearl 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, openhuman or Pearl?
Choose openhuman if you want the larger community (39,904 stars) or its GPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose Pearl if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.