OpenHands
Open-source autonomous AI software engineer capable of executing complex engineering tasks and collaborating with users on software development
Overview
OpenHands (formerly OpenDevin) is an open-source platform for autonomous AI software engineers. Originally inspired by Devin, the first commercial AI software engineer, OpenHands provides a fully autonomous agent that can write code, execute terminal commands, browse the web, and interact with APIs. Unlike proprietary solutions, OpenHands gives developers complete control over the agent's behavior, model selection, and deployment. It supports any LLM backend including Claude, GPT-4, and local models via Ollama, making it ideal for teams wanting to self-host their AI coding assistant without vendor lock-in.
The Verdict
Who Should Use OpenHands?
Best For
- Teams wanting full control over AI agents
- Privacy-conscious organizations (self-hosted)
- Developers experimenting with AI agents
- Cost-conscious teams (use own API keys)
- Contributors to open-source AI
Not Ideal For
- Non-technical users (setup required)
- Those wanting zero configuration
- Teams without Docker experience
- Production without dedicated DevOps
What's Great
- Completely free and open source (MIT license)
- Use any LLM provider (Claude, GPT, local models)
- Full agent autonomy with code execution
- Web browsing and API interaction built-in
- Active community with rapid development
- Self-host for complete data privacy
- Sandboxed execution environment
Watch Out For
- Requires Docker and technical setup
- API costs can add up with heavy use
- Lower benchmark scores than commercial tools
- Less polish than Devin or Claude Code
- Community support only (no enterprise SLA)
Pricing
View all features & details
Core Capabilities
- Autonomous code generation
- Terminal command execution
- Web browsing & research
- File system operations
- Git operations & PR creation
- API interactions
- Multi-step task planning
- Error recovery & debugging
Supported Models
- Claude 3.5/4 (Anthropic)
- GPT-4o/4 Turbo (OpenAI)
- Gemini Pro (Google)
- Llama 3 (Meta, via Ollama)
- Mistral/Mixtral
- DeepSeek Coder
- Any OpenAI-compatible API
Deployment Options
- Docker (recommended)
- Local development
- Cloud VMs (AWS, GCP, Azure)
- Kubernetes clusters
- All Hands Cloud (hosted)
Security
- Sandboxed code execution
- Configurable permissions
- Self-hosted data privacy
- No telemetry by default
- MIT open source license
Benchmarks
Real-World Usage
Community Stats
- 400+ contributors
- 10,000+ Discord members
- Weekly release cadence
Common Use Cases
- Automated PR creation
- Bug fixing from issues
- Code refactoring tasks
- Documentation generation
How It Compares
| Feature | OpenHands | Devin | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | Free (OSS) | $500/mo | $20-200/mo |
| SWE-bench Score | 53% | 13.86%* | 80.8% |
| Self-Hosted | Yes | No | No |
| Model Flexibility | Any LLM | Proprietary | Claude only |
| Web Browsing | Yes | Yes | Limited |
| Terminal Access | Yes | Yes | Native |
| Setup Complexity | Medium | Low | Low |
| Enterprise Support | Community | Yes | Yes |
| Best For | OSS enthusiasts | Startups with budget | Large codebases |
*Devin’s original SWE-bench score; scores vary by benchmark version