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Open source alternatives to Claude Cowork

5 open source tools do the job of Claude Cowork. The most starred is DeepSeek Harness, with 280k stars. Verified on GitHub. About Claude Cowork

Claude Cowork homepage
Claude CoworkPaid
DeepSeek Harness homepage
DeepSeek Harness280k stars · MITGitHub

All 5 alternatives

Questions about alternatives to Claude Cowork

What is the best open source alternative to Claude Cowork?

By GitHub stars it is DeepSeek Harness, with 280,496 stars and a commit on 13 Nov. Choose DeepSeek Harness when you want an MIT-licensed desktop agent for coding, documents and research that runs on low-cost DeepSeek models. Next come Hermes Desktop (263,223 stars) and goose (56,560 stars).

Is there a free alternative to Claude Cowork?

Yes. The code of all 5 is public under MIT or Apache 2.0, so you can use them with no licence fee. Running one yourself costs the server and your time to look after it, and some makers also sell a hosted plan.

How do I choose between them?

Start from the job you use Claude Cowork for. Choose goose when you want a desktop agent for multi-step office tasks that runs on your own machine with the model you pick. Choose AionUi when you want one free desktop app that runs Claude Code, Codex and other agents on your local files.

Which Claude Cowork alternatives can I host on my own server?

1 of the 5: goose. Each tool's page says what it needs to run.

Which ones are still being worked on?

All 5 we track had a commit in the last 30 days, among them DeepSeek Harness, Hermes Desktop, goose and AionUi. A recent commit shows the project is kept up, not that it will stay that way.

What licences do they use?

Apache 2.0 (3), MIT (2). MIT, BSD and Apache let you change and reuse the code freely.

What do I lose by leaving Claude Cowork?

The hosting. Claude Cowork's maker runs the servers for you; with an open source tool the updates, backups, security fixes and support are yours, unless you take the maker's hosted plan. Features differ too, so check what each one imports and exports before you move your data.