Open-source Ona alternatives

OpenHands is an open-source project for AI-driven software development. Its current README centers on Agent Canvas, a self-hosted developer control center for starting conversations with coding agents and automating everyday engineering tasks. It is written mainly in TypeScript and released under the MIT license.

By default Agent Canvas uses the open-source OpenHands agent, but it can also drive third-party agents such as Claude Code, Codex and Gemini, or any ACP-compatible agent. It runs locally by default and can connect to several agent backends, including Docker containers, virtual machines and company infrastructure, so agents can be moved between local, remote and cloud setups without interrupting your work.

Automations can be triggered on a timetable or by incoming webhook events and connect with tools such as Slack, GitHub, Linear and Notion, for example publishing reports to Slack or breaking GitHub issues into tasks. Agents can optionally run on OpenHands Cloud or OpenHands Enterprise. It suits engineering teams that want to coordinate several coding agents from one self-managed place.

code-server is an open-source project that runs VS Code on a server and makes the editor available in a web browser. It lets developers keep their development environment on a remote machine and reach it from any device with a browser. The project is maintained by Coder, is written in TypeScript and is released under the MIT license.

Because the editor runs remotely, heavy work such as builds and language tooling happens on the server rather than on a laptop or tablet. Its GitHub topics highlight remote work, VS Code Remote and browser-based IDE use. Coder, the company behind it, also sells a commercial platform for self-hosted cloud development environments, while code-server is the simpler open-source editor-in-a-browser project.

It suits individuals who want a consistent coding environment across devices, remote teams working on shared servers, and users who want a browser-based IDE on their own hardware or a cloud instance they control.

Coder is a self-hosted platform for running cloud development environments and AI coding agents on infrastructure you control. Workspaces are defined with Terraform and can be backed by EC2 VMs, Kubernetes pods, Docker containers and similar resources, so developers can start from a prepared environment instead of configuring a local machine.

Workspaces connect through a secure WireGuard tunnel and shut down automatically when idle to save on costs. Developers can use IDEs such as VS Code and JetBrains. Coder Agents runs an AI coding agent whose loop executes in the control plane on your infrastructure, works with models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Bedrock or self-hosted options, and keeps LLM credentials out of workspaces while providing audit logging and cost tracking.

The server can be installed with a script on Linux and macOS or from a Windows binary, and it starts with a built-in database for evaluation. Production use calls for a PostgreSQL database and an external access URL. Coder is written in Go and released under AGPL-3.0, with a paid Premium tier referenced in its documentation.