head to head · open source
RWKV-Runner vs agent-router
RWKV-Runner has 6,482 GitHub stars, 601 forks, 178 open issues and last shipped 16 days ago. agent-router has 2,121 stars, 382 forks, 300 open issues and last shipped today. RWKV-Runner leads on adoption by 206% (6,482 vs 2,121 stars). RWKV-Runner is written in TypeScript under MIT; agent-router is written in Go under Apache-2.0. RWKV-Runner has attracted 9% as many forks as stars, agent-router 18%. agent-router was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (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
| RWKV-Runner | agent-router | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 6.5K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-04 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 601 | ⑂ 382 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick RWKV-Runner if
- You weight community size — 6.5K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick agent-router if
- You want the agent-router feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and agent-router fits your workflow better
About RWKV-Runner
RWKV Runner is a management and startup tool for RWKV, an open source large language model that is available for commercial use. It ships as a lightweight executable of only a few megabytes and automates the work of getting a model running, so that the user does not have to assemble the runtime, dependencies, and serving stack by hand. The project is written in TypeScript and built with Wails, and it is distributed under the MIT license from the josStorer repository. It lives in the RWKV ecosystem and in the broader local inference tooling space, with a companion site at rwkv.com.
read the full RWKV-Runner overview →
About agent-router
Agent Router is an open source control plane for AI and agent traffic, built on Envoy and Envoy Gateway, that gives application teams one consistent OpenAI compatible API across hosted providers, self hosted inference, and MCP servers, and it is aimed at platform teams and application teams running generative AI workloads, especially on Kubernetes.
read the full agent-router overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is RWKV-Runner or agent-router more popular?
RWKV-Runner has 6,482 GitHub stars and agent-router has 2,121. RWKV-Runner has the larger community by that measure.
Are RWKV-Runner and agent-router free?
Both are open source. RWKV-Runner is licensed under MIT and agent-router under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between RWKV-Runner and agent-router?
RWKV-Runner is written in TypeScript and agent-router in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, RWKV-Runner or agent-router?
Choose RWKV-Runner if you want the larger community (6,482 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose agent-router if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.