head to head · open source
Tailcall vs agent-router
Tailcall has 7,637 GitHub stars, 1,467 forks, 45 open issues and last shipped yesterday. agent-router has 2,121 stars, 382 forks, 300 open issues and last shipped today. Tailcall leads on adoption by 260% (7,637 vs 2,121 stars). Tailcall is written in Rust under Apache-2.0; agent-router is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Tailcall has attracted 19% 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
| Tailcall | agent-router | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 7.6K | ★ 2.1K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-19 | 2026-09-20 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.5K | ⑂ 382 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Tailcall if
- You weight community size — 7.6K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- 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 Tailcall
Tailcall is an Apache 2.0 licensed, Rust based developer tool listed in this registry whose repository (tailcallhq/forgecode) and README present it as Forge, an AI enhanced terminal development environment: a command line coding agent that works against Claude, GPT, O Series, Grok, Deepseek, Gemini and, per its own description, more than 300 other models.
read the full Tailcall 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 Tailcall or agent-router more popular?
Tailcall has 7,637 GitHub stars and agent-router has 2,121. Tailcall has the larger community by that measure.
Are Tailcall and agent-router free?
Both are open source. Tailcall is licensed under Apache-2.0 and agent-router under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Tailcall and agent-router?
Tailcall is written in Rust 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, Tailcall or agent-router?
Choose Tailcall if you want the larger community (7,637 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose agent-router if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.