head to head · open source
pi vs OpenHands
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars, 15,353 forks, 202 open issues and last shipped yesterday. OpenHands has 92,511 stars, 12,330 forks, 713 open issues and last shipped yesterday. pi leads on adoption by 29% (119,586 vs 92,511 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%. pi 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 | ★ 120K | ★ 93K |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 15K | ⑂ 12K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick pi if
- You weight community size — 120K 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
New issues and PRs from new contributors are auto closed by default. Maintainers review auto closed issues daily. See CONTRIBUTING.md. Pi Agent Harness This is the home of the Pi agent harness project including our self extensible coding agent. @earendil works/pi coding agent : Interactive coding agent CLI @earendil works/pi agent core : Agent runtime with tool calling and state management @earendil works/pi ai : Unified multi provider LLM API (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, …) To learn more about Pi: Visit pi.dev, the project website with demos Read the documentation, but you can also ask the agent to explain…
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 pi or OpenHands more popular?
pi has 119,586 GitHub stars and OpenHands has 92,511. 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 (119,586 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose OpenHands if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.