head to head · open source
Orca vs OpenHands
Orca has 113,485 GitHub stars, 7,169 forks, 5,801 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands has 92,511 stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Orca leads on adoption by 23% (113,485 vs 92,511 stars). Orca is written in TypeScript under MIT; OpenHands is written in TypeScript under MIT. Orca has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, OpenHands 13%. Orca 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
| Orca | OpenHands | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 113K | ★ 93K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.2K | ⑂ 12K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Orca if
- You weight community size — 113K 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 Orca
Orca 中文 · 日本語 · 한국어 · Español · Français · Português The AI Orchestrator for 100x builders. Run Codex, ClaudeCode, OpenCode or Pi side by side — each in its own worktree, tracked in one place. Download Orca Features Mobile Companion Monitor and steer your agents from your phone — get notified when an agent finishes and send follow ups from anywhere. iOS App Store · TestFlight · Android APK 0.0.48 · Docs → Parallel Worktrees Fan one prompt across five agents, each in its own isolated git worktree — compare the results and merge the winner. Docs → Terminal Splits Ghostty class terminals with WebGL rendering…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Orca or OpenHands more popular?
Orca has 113,485 GitHub stars and OpenHands has 92,511. Orca has the larger community by that measure.
Are Orca and OpenHands free?
Both are open source. Orca is licensed under MIT and OpenHands under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Orca and OpenHands?
Orca 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, Orca or OpenHands?
Choose Orca if you want the larger community (113,485 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenHands if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.