# AXLR vs OpenHands (slim)

> AXLR and OpenHands score within a point of each other for agent harnesses, 70.6 and 70.3 out of 100. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axlr-vs-openhands.md (~6,650 tokens) · this version ~3,330 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axlr-vs-openhands.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/axlr-vs-openhands
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-01
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AXLR and OpenHands score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 70.6 (BB) and 70.3 (BB). OpenHands leads on reliability, schema & documentation, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

- AXLR: BB 70.6, rank #168 of 1253 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/axlr.min.md
- OpenHands: BB 70.3, rank #174 of 1253 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/openhands.min.md
- AXLR, good for A program or bot that needs one governed execution at a time, with a policy, a budget, a sandbox profile and correlation ids it sets itself and a result object it reads back, on a machine it controls, with the model on OpenRouter, a local server or a native Anthropic or OpenAI key. Ahead on Agent ergonomics, 83 against 78. Also Free to start without a card; No incidents deducted, where OpenHands loses 7 points for them.
- OpenHands, good for Teams that want to self-host a coding agent with a web UI, per-conversation Docker sandboxes and scheduled or webhook automations, or embed the agent through a Python SDK and REST API. Ahead on Reliability, 90 against 70; Schema & documentation, 90 against 80; Maintenance & community, 85 against 79; Transparency & trust, 67 against 55.

| Category | AXLR | OpenHands |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 70 | 90 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 80 | 90 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 83 | 78 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 62 | 64 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 79 | 85 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 55 | 67 |

| Fact (where they differ) | AXLR | OpenHands |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Underpass AI | All Hands AI |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| Licence | Apache-2.0, with a NOTICE naming Tirso García Ibáñez as the copyright holder | MIT (Agent Canvas, SDK, tools and Agent Server). OpenHands Cloud is a hosted service |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-25 | 2026-10-28 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2025-09-03 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes |
| Popularity | 0 stars | 90k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.5/5 (2) |

Why the edge:
- Reliability, OpenHands +20: AXLR 70 (Read as a local package, as claude-code, goose, opencode and openhands were. Release archives for Linux, macOS and Windows on amd64 and arm64 with a `.sha256` beside each, a GHCR image, an OCI Helm chart and source builds with Go 1.26, all stated in the docs; no Homebrew, npm or apt route (20). CI on main runs vet, race tests and a coverage gate above 80 per cent for both modules, with the sandbox tests required under bubblewrap, and the last ten runs on main to 1 November 2026 all passed; the release workflow tests on six native runners (25). 10 open issues, all opened by the founder on 19 and 21 October 2026 as trackers for service work (work modes, plugins, the sandbox setting, cost limits), none from an outside user and none a crash report, 0 open pull requests and about 100 merged; with 0 stars there is nobody else to report, so the handling of outside reports is untested (20). Tags are semver 0.x and the docs date each behaviour change inline ("until 14 October 2026…"), but the 21 releases have empty notes, there is no CHANGELOG.md, and the product contract records one retirement (the seven 1.0 skill definitions on 5 October 2026) without a notice period (5). Pre-1.0, which the README calls an evolving project (0). 20+25+20+5+0 = 70.); OpenHands 90 (Read as a local package. Official npm package @openhands/agent-canvas (Node 24 or later, plus uv), a Docker image on GHCR and openhands-sdk on PyPI (Python 3.12 or later) (20). A CI workflow (ci.yml) runs on main beside desktop, Docker and end-to-end workflows; the runs passed on every load on 1 October, and GitHub's pages refused us on 1 November, so the award rests on that check (25). 456 open issues and 395 open pull requests with priority labels and a high-priority Cloud resume bug (#17664), per the 1 October check, not re-read on 1 November (18). Dated release notes for every Canvas version and a written SDK rule of at least five minor releases before a public API or REST contract is removed, which the SDK followed on 28 October when it dropped the ACP curated model lists at their stated 1.59.0 deadline, but the Canvas CHANGELOG.md still stops at 1.0.0-alpha.2 (12). Canvas is 1.34.0 and the SDK 1.59.0, and the README's beta badge was removed on 23 October 2026 (commit 4d1c4d1, noted in the 1.33.0 release notes), so the product is no longer labelled beta. Only the Apps extension API keeps a beta label (15).)
- Transparency & trust, OpenHands +12: AXLR 55 (Apache-2.0 with a NOTICE (30). No privacy policy or terms on underpassai.com or axlr.underpassai.com; the docs' 'Where data goes' and 'Diagnostics and privacy' sections say that model requests go to OpenRouter, the local server or the native API, that Jev sends text to TypeSafe only when on, that sessions live under `$XDG_STATE_HOME/axlr`, that payload capture is off by default and redacted when on, and that traces are deleted after 30 days; nothing covers the engine downloads' or the catalog registry's handling of a client's requests (15). No deprecation policy; pre-1.0 changes are dated inline in the docs and the product contract records the 5 October 2026 retirement of the first skill catalogue after the fact (6). No telemetry to disclose, and the docs say in two places what leaves the machine and how to stop payload capture, though no single page says there is no telemetry (17). 30+15+6+17 = 68.); OpenHands 67 (MIT across Canvas, SDK, tools and Agent Server (30). The privacy policy (effective 3 September 2025, re-read on 1 November) doesn't separate the open-source stack from the Cloud service, keeps data as long as reasonably necessary, allows training on content from the Services and has no subprocessor list (12). A written SDK deprecation runway of five minor releases, kept on 28 October when the ACP model lists were removed at their 1.59.0 deadline, and the CLI's unmaintained notice in its README without a date on the page (15). The consent prompt calls the data anonymous and the Docker page documents `AGENT_CANVAS_DISABLE_TELEMETRY`, but no user-facing page mentions the install event sent before consent (10).)
- Schema & documentation, OpenHands +10: AXLR 80 (An OpenAPI 3.1 file for the service (15 paths, 23 schemas, `mutualTLS` security scheme, `additionalProperties: false` on request bodies), a checked proto for the gRPC service, and the 19 MCP tools built from the same shared schemas (25). No llms.txt on either site (404), and the docs site renders HTML; the Markdown sources are in the repository (5). The product contract tables what each of the four interfaces can and cannot do, the work-mode table states each mode's purpose and tool policy, the transport parity ledger names every verb's arguments and behaviour, and `axlr_tools` tells the model to look for a tool before forging one (15). Typed inputs throughout, `Idempotency-Key` 16 to 128 safe ASCII characters, `expected_revision` a positive integer, policy levels, sandbox profiles and egress values enumerated, budgets as four integers, and the service rejects unknown fields, invalid types and bodies over 4 MiB (14). Examples in every guide, an error shape of `code`, `message` and `request_id`, named codes (`409 idempotency_conflict`, `400 invalid_cursor`, `422 invalid_policy`, `invalid_budget`, `sandbox_unavailable`, `not_ready`, `invalid_id`), a gRPC status mapping, and the worker's five statuses and three exit codes; no single error reference page (14). `/v1` routes and an OpenAPI version of 0.1.0 against a 0.15.0 release, and no changelog beyond the dated notes inside the docs (7). 25+5+15+14+14+7 = 80.); OpenHands 90 (The Agent Server REST API has an OpenAPI 3.1 spec in the docs repository (40 paths, still labelled 0.1.0), the Cloud API has another (155 paths), SDK models are Pydantic-typed and there's a TypeScript client (25). llms.txt at docs.openhands.dev (551 lines on 1 November), with no CLI, local GUI or V0 pages in it (10). The docs have a when-to-use page and examples of good and bad task instructions. On 23 October the Deprecated Projects group (local GUI, CLI, V0) was taken out of the navigation and links to it reworded towards Agent Canvas, though the pages stay reachable by URL and the SDK architecture page still links the CLI repository (15). Confirmation policies, security analysers and MCP configs are discriminated Pydantic unions with validators (13). SDK examples are checked by a CI workflow and there are troubleshooting pages, but we found no error reference for the Agent Server (12). Dated release notes for each Canvas version in the docs (1.25.0 to 1.34.0 added since 1 October), and release tags (15).)
- Maintenance & community, OpenHands +6: AXLR 79 (v0.15.0 on 2026-10-25, with commits on main to 2026-11-01 (30). 21 releases between 4 and 25 October 2026 (20). One maintainer (368 of 399 commits, the rest by two agent accounts), 10 open issues that are his own trackers with no comments, about 100 merged pull requests and no outside report to measure a reply against (15). Not in the MCP registry; the Go module and a proto to generate clients from are the only client code, beside the GHCR image and Helm chart (5). Go 1.26 toolchain pinned, release actions pinned by commit SHA, a go-licenses check that the third-party bundle matches the dependency graph, and CI passing on main (9). 30+20+15+5+9 = 79.); OpenHands 85 (Agent Canvas 1.34.0 on 2026-10-27 and SDK 1.59.0 on 2026-10-28, by the repository tags (30). 29 Canvas releases (1.9.0 on 3 August to 1.34.0) and 33 SDK releases (1.40.1 on 5 August to 1.59.0) in the 90 days from 3 August, not counting the security rebuild tags (20). Issues labelled by priority, but 456 open issues and 395 open pull requests and no visible reply times per the 1 October check; GitHub's pages refused us on 1 November (16). npm, PyPI and GHCR packages current per the 1 October check (the registries didn't answer from our shell on 1 November). The unmaintained `openhands` CLI is gone from the docs navigation and the pricing page but its pages remain (10). CI on main, Dependabot, a security scan and an API-breakage check on the SDK, and security rebuilds of older images (agent-canvas 1.23.0-r3, agent-server 1.49.5-r3, 29 October) (9).)
- Agent ergonomics, AXLR +5: AXLR 83 (Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what a program driving it has to supply. Six local tools plus the host's bookkeeping tools; work modes and an execution policy hide the tools a run may not use, `axlr_catalog` searches the catalog instead of loading it, forged tools keep the request prefix for the prompt cache, and a context cap of 75,000 prompt tokens opens a successor session (20). `local_read`, `local_search` and `local_list` page with `offset`, `next_offset` and `max_bytes`; `StreamEvents` takes `after`, `max_events` (1 to 256) and `wait_ms`; a budget per execution in seconds, requests, tool calls and dollars; 32 tool calls a turn and `max_session_usd` (20). The `--exec` run ends in one `result` line with a status, the pending call, every call's outcome and the usage, and exits 0, 3 or 1; service errors carry codes an agent can act on; a budget stop says which limit (`budget: requests 20 reached`) and leaves the session resumable (16). `Idempotency-Key` on every turn, approval and direct call with cross-transport replay, `expected_revision` on decisions, `expected_sha256` on worker writes, and an interrupted effectful call left `uncertain` for an operator rather than retried (19). One command runs a task, but the first launch needs an OpenRouter key or a local server, the service needs a CA, a principals file and remote KMP and MADE before a first session, and the only SDK is the Go library (8). 20+20+16+19+8 = 83.); OpenHands 78 (Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. The default agent carries three tools (terminal, file editor, task tracker), and `filter_tools_regex` trims MCP tools before they reach the model (23). Stuck detection is on by default and a condenser compacts long histories, but Canvas leaves `max_iterations` unset and we found no cost cap (15). Headless runs go through the SDK, the Agent Server REST API or the Cloud API with typed events, and the old CLI's `--headless` mode is unmaintained (14). Conversations persist and resume, and a Docker conversation keeps its workspace and history when the container is replaced (16). Python SDK and TypeScript client, but the quickstart needs Node 24 and uv, and the defaults skip both confirmation and the sandbox (10).)