DeepSeek Harness vs OpenClaw
DeepSeek Harness (DeepSeek) and OpenClaw (OpenClaw Foundation (nonprofit); created by Peter Steinberger) side by side on public data, as of Oct 6, 2026.
OpenClaw has 9.9x the weekly package downloads of DeepSeek Harness (4.5M against 452K). OpenClaw has 1.6x the GitHub stars of DeepSeek Harness (391K against 244K). OpenClaw shipped 20 stable releases in the past 90 days.
Side-by-side numbers
| Metric | DeepSeek Harness | OpenClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Pulse Score | 62 | 80 |
| Overall rank | #14 | #2 |
| Downloads, last 7 days | 452K | 4.5M |
| Downloads, 7-day change | down 7.9% | up 34.8% |
| Downloads, 30-day change | — | up 28.5% |
| VS Code installs | — | — |
| Marketplace rating | — | 3.4 / 5 (62) |
| GitHub stars | 244K | 391K |
| Homebrew installs, 30 days | — | 580 |
| Hacker News mentions, 30 days | 51 | 215 |
| Latest stable release | — | 2026.9.8 · 3d ago |
| Stable releases, 90 days | 20 | |
| Terminal-Bench (best run) | — | — |
| Price | Free | Free (OSS) |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| First released | August 2026 | November 2025 |
| Interfaces | — | Messaging apps, CLI, Desktop, Mobile |
| Models | Model-agnostic: Claude, OpenAI Codex/GPT, DeepSeek and local models via plugins |
Trends
DeepSeek Harness
An agent harness from DeepSeek in which every capability is a plugin. Its agent reads and edits workspace files, runs commands, delegates work and keeps a plan, and it runs as a desktop app, a browser UI or the dsh command-line tool.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT); users enter their own DeepSeek API key or another OpenAI-compatible provider.
OpenClaw
Open-source personal AI assistant that runs on the user's own machine as a gateway and works through chat apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord and iMessage, with a skills system and swappable model plugins. It also ships native apps for macOS, iOS, Android and Windows.
Pricing: Free and open source (MIT) with no paid tier, hosted service or token; users pay their chosen model providers.
Latest release 2026.9.8:
- Release notes — formatted for people, with expandable sections.
- Changelog — plain Markdown for AI agents and tools.
- npm package
- registry tarball