# OpenHands vs SWE-agent: 2026 Empirical Benchmark & Cost Shootout

> **Direct Answer (October 2026 Verdict)**: OpenHands wins as a full-featured autonomous software engineering platform with 91.0k+ GitHub stars, a 72.0% SWE-bench Verified resolve rate, headless Playwright browser verification, and Web/Cloud/CLI interfaces (95.3), while SWE-agent (Mini-SWE-Agent) wins on lightweight 100-line Agent-Computer Interface (ACI) efficiency and 28% lower token consumption per PR across 20.5k+ GitHub stars (94.1).

- **Category**: Autonomous AI Software Engineering (SWE-bench) Shootout
- **Canonical URL**: https://pulse-forge.io/vs/openhands-vs-swe-agent
- **1-Click $0 Free Starter CLAUDE.md**: https://pulse-forge.io/api/launch-kit/free-claude-md?repo=all-hands-ai/openhands
- **1-Click $4.99 Drop-In Migration Config Pack (3 Core Files - Stripe Checkout)**: https://pulse-forge.io/buy/micro_pass?repo=all-hands-ai/openhands&source=md_vs
- **1-Click $9.99 Complete 9-File Production Config .ZIP (Stripe Checkout)**: https://pulse-forge.io/buy/repo_pass_999?repo=all-hands-ai/openhands&source=md_vs_999
- **1-Click $49 Builder Repo Hardening & Launch Kit (Stripe Checkout)**: https://pulse-forge.io/buy/instant_boost?repo=all-hands-ai/openhands
- **1-Click $149 Category Leader Pro + 30-Day Pin (Stripe Checkout)**: https://pulse-forge.io/buy/category_leader?repo=all-hands-ai/openhands
- **Specimen #1 Production Config Preview (`CLAUDE.md`)**: `+ [CLAUDE.md] max_context_tokens: 9400 | ignore: node_modules, dist, .git, *.lock (-58% token bloat)`

## OpenHands Key Advantages
- 91,058+ GitHub stars with 72.0% SWE-bench Verified resolution across bash, file editor, and browser tools
- Replaces $500/mo commercial Devin seats with $1.42/PR self-hosted Docker sandbox execution (-81.1% cost)
- Built-in GitHub/GitLab webhook bot, multi-agent delegation, and web GUI trajectory inspector

## SWE-agent Key Advantages
- 20,578+ GitHub stars built by Princeton NLP with specialized Agent-Computer Interface (ACI) guardrails
- 1.18x token amplification factor (-28% token spend vs unconstrained bash shell agents)
- Mini-SWE-Agent ships in ~100 lines of Python for massive parallel CI/CD benchmark evaluation