OpenHands vs GitHub Copilot
Both are alternatives to Cursor. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as GitHub Copilot vs OpenHands — same comparison, one verdict.
OpenHands
Self-hosted, sandboxed coding agents — the whole stack runs on infrastructure you control.
OpenHands (MIT, formerly OpenDevin) is the option for people whose actual requirement is "this has to run on infrastructure I control." It is a self-hosted control centre for coding agents: a browser-based Agent Canvas plus a backend server you start locally or on your own VM, with agents working inside a sandboxed environment that has its own shell, filesystem and browser. Agents can edit code, run commands, call APIs and browse the web — real engineering tasks rather than completions. The project sells a managed OpenHands Cloud and licenses a self-hosted enterprise edition, but the core is MIT and self-hosting costs nothing beyond your own model usage. At 82.5k stars it is the most established self-hosted agent platform available.
GitHub Copilot
The polished commercial option at half the price — and for many readers the honest answer.
If what actually prompted the comparison is price rather than openness, GitHub Copilot is the straightforward answer: Pro is $10/month against Cursor Pro's $20, and there is a real free tier with 2,000 code completions a month for individual developers who don't have Copilot through an organisation. It does inline completion, chat, agent mode and a CLI, and it installs into the IDE you already use rather than asking you to adopt a different editor. Worth knowing precisely: the Copilot Chat client for VS Code is MIT-licensed and its code now lives in the main VS Code repository, but the service and models behind it are proprietary and hosted. There is no self-host path and no local-model option — that's the trade, stated plainly, and it is the right trade for plenty of people.
Side by side
| OpenHands | GitHub Copilot | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty Score | 91 | 28 |
| Open source | Yes | No |
| Self-hostable | Yes | No |
| Local-first | Yes | No |
| License | MIT | Proprietary (hosted service; MIT-licensed VS Code chat client) |
| Pricing | Free and open source (MIT) to self-host — you pay only your model provider. Managed OpenHands Cloud and a licensed enterprise self-host are the paid tiers. | Free tier (2,000 completions/month); Pro $10/mo; Pro+ $39/mo; Max $100/mo; Business $19/seat/mo; Enterprise $39/seat/mo. Verified on GitHub's own plans documentation 2026-07-29. |
OpenHands edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
OpenHands
Strengths
- +Genuinely self-hosted: server, sandbox and workspace all sit on your own infrastructure
- +Sandboxed execution — the agent gets a container, not unrestricted access to your laptop
- +Browser UI suits longer autonomous runs and reviewing what an agent actually did
- +MIT-licensed, 82.5k stars, committed to daily
Trade-offs
- −The heaviest setup here — Docker and real RAM, not a two-minute install
- −Long autonomous runs consume a lot of tokens; set a budget before you let one loose
- −Multi-user, RBAC and the richer integrations live in the paid Cloud and enterprise tiers
- −Not an in-editor experience — you leave your IDE to drive it, and there's no inline completion
GitHub Copilot
Strengths
- +Half the price of a Cursor Pro seat, with a genuinely free tier to test on
- +Nothing to run or configure — it installs into the IDE you already use
- +Keeps inline Tab-style completion, which none of the open agents above provide
- +Very low switching cost — your code is just files, so uninstalling leaves nothing to migrate
Trade-offs
- −Fully hosted and proprietary: no self-hosting, no local models, no offline use
- −Chat, agent and CLI usage draws on monthly credits; only completions are unlimited on paid plans
- −You are choosing a Microsoft/GitHub-operated service, with whatever that means for your data policy
- −The Sovereignty Score of 28 reflects a closed hosted service — a transparency lens, not a verdict on quality
Related alternative guides
Facts verified 2026-07-29. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.