deer-flow vs orca
The two are close in size: 84.2k stars for deer-flow, 99.0k for orca. Over the days we have tracked them deer-flow moved +8.4% and orca +273.2%, so orca is growing faster right now.
orca leads on context depth. deer-flow does not take any axis by a clear margin.
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
- 84.2k
- Tracked growth
- +8.4%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 2h ago
- Language
- Python
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Your API key or self-hosted
Runs any CLI coding agent side-by-side in isolated git worktrees (including remote SSH worktrees) with a desktop app and mobile companion for steering and comparison.
- Stars
- 99.0k
- Tracked growth
- +273.2%
- Maturity
- ●●●●●
- Last commit
- 12m ago
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- MIT
- Cost to run
- Use your agent subscriptions / API keys
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 | orca |
|---|---|---|
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 analysis |
Noise control How it keeps output volume down — severity thresholds, deduplication, incremental runs over new commits only. | ●●●●● Basic filters | ●●●●● Manual review & basic filters |
Customization How far it bends to your team: custom rules, prompts, style guides, per-path config. | ●●●●● Extensive config | ●●●●● Custom prompts & scripts |
Privacy Whether your code stays on your own infrastructure: fully local, self-hostable, or cloud API only. | ●●●●● Self-hostable | ●●●●● Can run fully local |
Model freedom Whether you can point it at any provider, or it is wired to one. | ●●●●● BYOK & local | ●●●●● Any agent / BYO key |
Setup ease What it takes to get a first useful run out of it. | ●●●●● Interactive setup | ●●●●● One-click install |
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.
Pick orca if…
Flexible agent support — run your preferred CLI agents locally or remotely, fan prompts across parallel worktrees, and review/merge results from a single desktop + mobile UI.
- Context depth: Whole-repo analysis (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.
stablyai/orca
Hacker News: Orca – Live Programming Environment drew 290 points and 58 comments.
Questions people ask
Is deer-flow better than orca?
orca leads on context depth. deer-flow does not take any axis by a clear margin. 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 orca keeps my code private?
deer-flow: Self-hostable (4/5). orca: Can run fully local (5/5).
What does each one cost to run?
deer-flow: Your API key or self-hosted. orca: Use your agent subscriptions / API keys.
Full profiles: bytedance/deer-flow and stablyai/orca. Everything else in Multi-agent orchestration.