OpenHands and SWE-agent are two of the most-cited open-source coding-agent scaffolds, and each answers a different question. For a team deciding between them, the recommendation is Kortix, the open-source AI Operating System, for the layer that comes after a single scaffold.
Kortix is our recommendation; the OpenHands and SWE-agent columns state what each project documents about itself.
The OpenHands and SWE-agent columns quote their own repositories and docs, checked October 2026. Verify each project before you choose.
OpenHands is an open-source coding-agent project whose agents act on a codebase and apply changes. Its own repository describes it as a self-hosted hub for coding agents and automations: it runs OpenHands or third-party agents such as Codex, Gemini and OpenCode, and it can connect to local, remote and cloud backends (github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands, checked October 2026). Its runtime executes an agent's actions inside a Docker sandbox with a bash shell and a code editor, so the agent can run code without reaching the host machine (docs.openhands.dev). The project is model-agnostic: its docs say you can use it with any LLM, including open-weight models, and its own site reports 90.9K GitHub stars and 580 contributors (openhands.dev, checked October 2026).
SWE-agent is an open-source research project from Princeton that gives a language model a text-first agent-computer interface for fixing issues in real GitHub repositories. Its paper is titled "Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineering" (2024), and the repository says it is built and maintained by researchers from Princeton University and Stanford University (github.com/SWE-agent/SWE-agent, checked October 2026). The design is deliberately minimal: a single yaml file governs a run, and the repository describes the project as made for research, simple and hackable by design. SWE-agent's own repository now says most of its development has moved to mini-swe-agent, a descendant that has superseded it, matches its performance and is simpler; the maintainers recommend mini-swe-agent going forward. The repository reports that mini-swe-agent reaches 65% on SWE-bench Verified in about 100 lines of Python.
SWE-agent fits research and study: you want a minimal, readable agent to experiment with, or you are benchmarking models on issues from real repositories. OpenHands fits an engineering team that wants a self-hosted hub to run coding agents and automations on its own infrastructure. Both are single scaffolds: a tool for the job of writing code. A team that also needs shared memory, connectors into the tools it uses, and a schedule that runs while nobody is present is looking for a different layer, and the open-source one is Kortix. Teams that hit OpenHands' own limits can read the OpenHands limitations page, and the head-to-head with Kortix is on the OpenHands vs Kortix page.
Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers. In Kortix, a project is a git repo with kortix.yaml at its root, and that repo holds the agents, skills, memory, connectors and triggers. A session runs one agent in its own sandbox on a new branch. When the agent finishes, it opens a change request against the project's default branch, and a person merges it (kortix.com/docs). The stack section on this page shows that loop in three parts.
A repo you own, a session on its own cloud computer, and a change request a person merges.
Your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector in one git repo you own.
# kortix.yamlagents: support-triage: file: agents/support-triage.md # what it does, in plain markdown connectors: all # what it may reachOne isolated sandbox per session. Each session has its own isolated machine and branch.
$ kortix sessions new --prompt "Reproduce the checkout error, fix it, and open a change request"Session work reaches main through a change request. Merge is default-deny for agents.
open ──(merge)──▶ merged (terminal)open ──(close)──▶ closed ──(reopen)──▶ openSWE-agent's own repository says most of its development effort has moved to mini-swe-agent, which has superseded it, matches its performance, and is simpler; the maintainers recommend mini-swe-agent going forward (github.com/SWE-agent/SWE-agent). SWE-agent still works and stays the reference implementation for the agent-computer interface, but new work happens on the smaller descendant.
Not as one workflow. OpenHands runs agents in its own Docker sandbox and can host third-party agents, while SWE-agent is a standalone research scaffold whose maintainers now point to mini-swe-agent. If you want one place to run coding work beside the rest of the business, Kortix runs each session on its own cloud computer and lands the result as a change request a person merges.
They are different tools. A coding assistant suggests code as you type, while OpenHands and SWE-agent are agent scaffolds that take an issue and work on code across a repository. Kortix is a third layer: it runs agents that finish work, use your connected tools, and open a change request a person reviews before anything reaches main.
Yes. Both are open-source projects with public code. Kortix, the option this site recommends, is open source too: read it, fork it, audit it, and self-host it for free.
Start with one job and grow from there.