OpenHands

What is OpenHands?

OpenHands Agent Canvas is a web control center for software agents. It runs the open-source OpenHands agent, or third-party agents such as Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and OpenCode, on your own machine, in Docker containers or on a VM. Agents can edit code, run commands and be triggered by schedules or webhooks from Slack, GitHub or Linear. You bring your own LLM.

Where it fits in a 10–200 person business

• A shared agent server that handles code review and dependency updates for the dev team
• Turn GitHub issues into tasks or draft fixes automatically
• Scheduled reports or maintenance jobs that post results to Slack

These use cases are our editorial suggestions, not claims made by the project.

Can a business use OpenHands? (license)

This is a plain-English summary of the license text, not legal advice. Third-party models you run with it have their own licenses.

Data & compliance: does OpenHands phone home?

Checked against the project's own docs and repository on Oct 22, 2026. "Not documented" means we could not find the answer in official sources; it does not mean the feature is missing or that no data is sent. Third-party services you connect (model APIs, vector databases, search engines) have their own data policies. Compare all apps.

What hardware does OpenHands need?

The self-hosting guide says 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM "is plenty for a single user" on a VM (Ubuntu 24.04 suggested). No figure is given for teams.

Source: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands/blob/main/docs/SELF_HOSTING.md

How much does it cost to host OpenHands per month?

How to deploy OpenHands

Method: Docker (or npm package)

export PROJECTS_PATH="$HOME/projects"
mkdir -p "$PROJECTS_PATH" "$HOME/.openhands"
docker run -it --rm \
  -p 127.0.0.1:8000:8000 \
  -e AGENT_CANVAS_ALLOW_LAN_SESSION_KEY=true \
  -v "$HOME/.openhands:/home/openhands/.openhands" \
  -v "${PROJECTS_PATH}:/projects" \
  ghcr.io/openhands/agent-canvas:1.30.1
# then open http://localhost:8000/canvas

From the official instructions: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands#option-2-with-a-docker-sandbox. Always check the source for the current version before you run it.

Known gotchas when self-hosting OpenHands

• Anyone who can reach the agent server can read and write files, run shell commands and use the network on that machine. Firewall everything except SSH, set a strong LOCAL_BACKEND_API_KEY and use --public mode before exposing it. source
• Running without the Docker sandbox (npm install / agent-canvas) gives the agent full access to the host filesystem. source
• If you publish the Docker port on a LAN or public interface, drop AGENT_CANVAS_ALLOW_LAN_SESSION_KEY so the session key is not injected into the page, and enter the API key in the UI instead. source
• Agent Canvas is labelled beta in the README (OpenHands incubator program), so check the current README before following older tutorials. source

Alternatives in Coding assistants

• Tabby Self-hosted AI coding assistant (Copilot alternative) for your team. Compare OpenHands vs Tabby

Sources

• GitHub repository: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands
• Official documentation, Hardware requirements, Gotcha 1: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands/blob/main/docs/SELF_HOSTING.md
• License text: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands/blob/main/LICENSE
• Deploy instructions: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands#option-2-with-a-docker-sandbox
• Gotcha 2: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands#option-1-without-a-sandbox
• Gotcha 3: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands#quickstart
• Gotcha 4: github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands#readme
• Hetzner Cloud pricing (cost estimate): www.hetzner.com/cloud/regular-performance
• GitHub stars, commits and releases: GitHub REST API, fetched Oct 22, 2026