OpenAI Agents alternatives: Mastra and OpenHands compared

As of 2026-10-13, Mastra is the closer documented fit for people looking for OpenAI Agents alternatives. Its sources describe an open-source TypeScript framework for building agents and workflows. OpenHands is a different kind of option: its sources describe a platform for building and running AI coding agents. None of the cited sources describe the OpenAI Agents SDK itself.

Quick comparison

How the options differ

General-purpose framework vs. coding-agent platform

Mastra's site calls it a TypeScript framework for building AI agents and AI-powered applications. According to the site, Mastra agents use LLMs and tools to reason about goals and pick tools. They keep iterating until the model gives a final answer or an optional stopping condition is met.

Mastra's listed use cases include conversational agents for customer support and onboarding, domain-specific copilots for coding, legal, finance or research work, and automations for multi-step workflows.

OpenHands says it lets you build and run AI coding agents. According to its site, you can start locally, automate engineering workflows, use any model, and scale with enterprise controls. The repository description is "AI-Driven Development". Radar also covers the related launch OpenHands 1.27 automation setup.

Building blocks and integrations

Mastra's site says you can define typed agents with their instructions, models, tools and runtime behavior in one place. The framework also provides workflows, memory, workspaces and observability.

Mastra's workflow engine uses .then(), .branch() and .parallel() for control flow. It supports human-in-the-loop steps that pause a workflow and wait for user input or approval before resuming.

Mastra also supports authoring Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. These servers expose agents, tools and other structured resources to any system that supports the protocol.

For evaluation and safety, Mastra's site lists built-in scorers and tracing of agent calls and token usage. It also lists support for external observability platforms and guardrails that process inputs and outputs.

OpenHands documents a Slack integration. It watches channels for @openhands mentions, opens a conversation with the message context, and replies when the agent finishes. The cited OpenHands excerpts do not describe a programmatic SDK, a memory system or evaluation tooling.

Model support

Mastra's site says its model routing connects to 90+ providers through one standard interface, with models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini and more.

OpenHands' site says you can "use any model". The cited sources do not list specific providers or setup steps.

Deployment, license and pricing

According to Mastra's site, Mastra applications can be deployed to any Node.js-compatible environment. Options include optional built-in deployers for Vercel, Netlify and Cloudflare and a standalone server powered by Hono. You can also integrate it with Next.js, Express, Fastify or other server apps.

Mastra's site says the core framework is open source under Apache 2.0 and enterprise features are source-available under the Mastra Enterprise License. It also says Mastra is free to start, with no seats or usage tiers. However, the GitHub API does not report a recognized license for the mastra-ai/mastra repository, so check the repository's license files yourself.

The GitHub API reports an MIT license for OpenHands/OpenHands. The cited sources do not state pricing. A repository license does not mean that model inference or any hosted service is free.

How we compared

On 2026-10-13 we read four primary sources. Two were GitHub repository metadata pages, for mastra-ai/mastra and OpenHands/OpenHands, covering description, license field, topics, homepage and creation date. The other two were the product sites mastra.ai and openhands.dev.

We ranked on three criteria, in this order:

1. Whether the sources describe a general-purpose toolkit for building agents, the closest documented match to an agents SDK.
2. How much model and provider flexibility is documented.
3. How clearly license and pricing are stated.

Mastra ranks first. Its sources document an agent framework with typed agent definitions, workflows, memory and model routing across multiple providers. OpenHands ranks second because its sources focus on coding agents and engineering workflows, not general agent building.

We did not install or run either tool. We did not test agent quality, latency, cost or reliability, and we ran no benchmarks.

Limitations

We had no source describing the OpenAI Agents SDK, so this page can't show feature parity between it and either option.

The OpenHands excerpts are short. They do not state pricing or supported languages. They also don't name deployment targets beyond local use or explain what "enterprise controls" include.

Mastra's license is reported inconsistently. The product site names Apache 2.0 for the core, but the GitHub API reports no recognized license.

Mastra's site lists customer stories from companies including Salesforce and MongoDB. Mastra published these stories itself, and we did not verify them.

The Mastra sources describe a TypeScript framework and do not say whether other languages are supported. Neither tool's sources give star counts, release cadence or community activity data.

See the Mastra hub, the OpenHands hub and other frameworks, or read about the related launch Mastra Agent Controller.