deer-flow vs OpenHands
The two are close in size: 81.4k stars for deer-flow, 86.2k for OpenHands. Over the days we have tracked them deer-flow moved +5.4% and OpenHands +6.4%, so OpenHands is growing faster right now.
They split the axes: deer-flow leads on noise control and customization, OpenHands on context depth.
Stars and commit dates come from our own daily tracking. The six axes are read off each project's documentation by our review pipeline, so they describe what a project says about itself, not what we measured in its code.
Where they stand today
Orchestrates long-horizon, multi-agent research workflows with sandboxed file-system sandboxes, subagents, memory and replay tools for reproducible deep-research tasks.
- Stars
- 81.4k
- Tracked growth
- +5.4%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 5h ago
- Language
- Python
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Your API key or self-hosted
A backend-agnostic, self-hosted developer control center that lets you run and switch between local, remote, and cloud agent backends without reworking your workflows.
- Stars
- 86.2k
- Tracked growth
- +6.4%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 15h ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Free to self-host; optional paid OpenHands Cloud/Enterprise
Six axes, head to head
Each axis runs 0 to 5. The label under a score is what that project's own docs claim, not a category average.
| Axis | deer-flow | OpenHands |
|---|---|---|
Context depth How much of your codebase it sees before it answers: the open diff, the diff plus related files, or the whole repository. | ●●●●● Diff + related | ●●●●● Whole-repo access |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● Basic filters | ●●●●● None mentioned |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Extensive config | ●●●●● Configurable backends/profiles |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Self-hostable | ●●●●● Self-hostable |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● BYOK & local | ●●●●● Bring-your-own model |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● Interactive setup | ●●●●● One-command start |
Which one to pick
Pick deer-flow if…
Extensible tooling — pick DeerFlow when you need a self-hostable, highly configurable super-agent harness that runs multi-step, sandboxed research and coding workflows with local model support.
- Noise control: Basic filters (3/5 against 1/5)
- Customization: Extensive config (5/5 against 3/5)
Pick OpenHands if…
Self-hosting — run agents locally or on your own servers and connect multiple backends while keeping data in-house and integrating with tools like GitHub and Slack.
- Context depth: Whole-repo access (5/5 against 3/5)
What people want from each one
bytedance/deer-flow
Hacker News: Has Anyone Tried Deerflow? drew 4 points and 0 comments.
OpenHands/OpenHands
Hacker News: OpenHands: AI-Driven Development drew 1 points and 0 comments.
Questions people ask
Is deer-flow better than OpenHands?
They split the axes: deer-flow leads on noise control and customization, OpenHands on context depth. deer-flow is worth picking when extensible tooling — pick DeerFlow when you need a self-hostable, highly configurable super-agent harness that runs multi-step, sandboxed research and coding workflows with local model support.
Which of deer-flow and OpenHands keeps my code private?
deer-flow: Self-hostable (4/5). OpenHands: Self-hostable (4/5).
What does each one cost to run?
deer-flow: Your API key or self-hosted. OpenHands: Free to self-host; optional paid OpenHands Cloud/Enterprise.
Full profiles: bytedance/deer-flow and OpenHands/OpenHands. Everything else in Multi-agent orchestration.