Google ADK vs OpenHands
Side-by-side comparison of two agent options that often come up together when people are choosing between self-hosted frameworks, managed assistants, and extensible AI tooling.
Open source19k stars
Google ADK
Google's open-source code-first Python toolkit for building and evaluating AI agents
Open source72k stars
OpenHands
AI software development agent that writes code, fixes bugs, and creates pull requests autonomously
Category
Google ADK
OpenHands
Tagline
Google's open-source code-first Python toolkit for building and evaluating AI agents
AI software development agent that writes code, fixes bugs, and creates pull requests autonomously
Deployment
Self-Hosted
Self-hosted (Docker)
Pricing
Free to use, with optional model or infrastructure costs if you self-host.
Free and open source. Requires LLM API key (OpenAI, Anthropic, or local via Ollama).
Channels
Web, CLI
Web, CLI
Open source
Yes
Yes
Privacy
Some privacy controls exist, but vendor-hosted infrastructure still handles a meaningful share of the data flow.
Self-hosted. Code and data stay on your machine. Use local models for full air-gap.
Google ADK pros
- Official Google backing
- Built-in evaluation framework
- Multi-agent orchestration
OpenHands pros
- Best-in-class coding agent with 71K+ stars.
- Can browse docs, write tests, fix CI failures autonomously.
- Active development, top SWE-bench scores.
Google ADK cons
- Python-only
- Development framework, not ready-to-use assistant
- Google Gemini API dependency
OpenHands cons
- Primarily a coding agent, not a general assistant.
- Requires LLM API key with non-trivial costs per task.
- Complex Docker setup for first-time users.
Google ADK gotchas
- You should expect ongoing hosting, uptime, and secret-management work if you deploy it for real users.
OpenHands gotchas
- Repo moved from All-Hands-AI/OpenHands to OpenHands/OpenHands.
- Works best with Claude Sonnet or GPT-4o.
- Token usage per PR can be high.
Not sure which one fits you?
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