head to head · open source
ponytail vs Suna
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars, 7,572 forks, 270 open issues and last shipped 4 days ago. Suna has 20,218 stars, 3,434 forks, 74 open issues and last shipped yesterday. ponytail leads on adoption by 599% (141,230 vs 20,218 stars). ponytail is written in JavaScript under MIT; Suna is written in TypeScript under a custom or non-standard licence. ponytail has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Suna 17%. Suna was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (ai-agents, 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
| ponytail | Suna | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 141K | ★ 20K |
| License | MIT | Custom / other |
| Written in | JavaScript | TypeScript |
| Last push | 2026-09-14 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 7.6K | ⑂ 3.4K |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick ponytail if
- You weight community size — 141K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick Suna if
- You want the Suna feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You evaluated both and Suna fits your workflow better
About ponytail
Ponytail is an open source agent skill for JavaScript and LLM based coding tools that makes an AI agent write the minimum working code for a task, and it is built for developers and teams running agents such as Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor against real repositories.
read the full ponytail overview →
About Suna
Suna is an open source AI Management System for autonomous AI agents that complete real world work. It lives in the AI and machine learning ecosystem, specifically AI development platforms, and presents an open source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. It packages agents, shared skills, company memory, connectors, and runtime configuration into a git repository, so teams can version, diff, audit, and reuse agent logic.
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Frequently asked questions
Is ponytail or Suna more popular?
ponytail has 141,230 GitHub stars and Suna has 20,218. ponytail has the larger community by that measure.
Are ponytail and Suna free?
Both are open source. ponytail is licensed under MIT, and Suna has no licence declared in this registry. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between ponytail and Suna?
ponytail is written in JavaScript and Suna 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, ponytail or Suna?
Choose ponytail if you want the larger community (141,230 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose Suna if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.