Tools/bytedance/deer-flow

deer-flow

An open-source long-horizon SuperAgent harness that researches, codes, and creates. With the help of sandboxes, memories, tools, skill, subagents and message gateway, it handles different levels of tasks that could take minutes to hours.

85.3k ★+217/wkestablishedPythonMIT License →trending

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Replaces:ChatGPT

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The Lens

By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.

Updated Oct 2026

DeerFlow is ByteDance's open source take on Manus and ChatGPT's agent mode: an agent harness that works one task for minutes or hours, researching, coding and building reports or slides. It gives the agent a sandboxed computer, persistent memory, skills and sub-agents, plus a web UI and chat bridges for Slack, Telegram, Discord and more. MIT licensed and free.

Version 2.1 shipped in September with SSO, role-based permissions and scheduled tasks. Self-hosting is real work: Python 3.12, Node 22, nginx and a make setup wizard, or Docker as the recommended path. Budget 4 vCPU and 8 GB of RAM to evaluate, 8 vCPU and 16 GB for a long-running server. Any OpenAI-compatible model API works.

Solo and small teams: free, plus tokens and hardware. Larger teams can run it multi-user, but multiple workers mean Postgres and Redis. Want orchestration as a library? LangGraph, which DeerFlow is built on, is lighter. OpenHands is the closest open comparison.

The catch: this thing runs commands. The README says it's built for a trusted local network and calls Gateway admin equivalent to code execution on the host. Expose it without auth and a firewall and you've handed strangers a shell.

Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid

fully free

Free: Everything. MIT licensed with no paid tier, no hosted cloud and no enterprise SKU. deerflow.tech is a project site with demos and docs, not a SaaS.

Self-hosted: The only mode. Docker is recommended (Compose v2.24+); local dev needs Python 3.12+, Node 22+, pnpm, uv and nginx. README sizing: 4 vCPU / 8 GB RAM / 20 GB SSD to evaluate, 8 vCPU / 16 GB / 40 GB as the starting point for a long-running server. SQLite is the default database; multi-worker deployments require Postgres plus the Redis stream bridge. Sandboxes run on the host, in Docker containers, on Kubernetes via a provisioner, or on third-party providers such as E2B and Tenki.

Paid: Nothing from the project. Your bills are model tokens from whatever OpenAI-compatible provider you connect (the README pushes ByteDance Volcengine's coding plan, but it isn't required), any hosted sandbox or paid search API you opt into, and the server.

Completely free and MIT licensed. Your bill is model tokens, a server with at least 8 GB of RAM, and any hosted sandbox or search API you opt into.

What to do by team size

Solo: free; Docker on a 4 vCPU / 8 GB machine plus model tokens
Small team: free; one long-running server kept on a trusted network behind auth
Medium team: free; built-in OIDC SSO and RBAC, but plan for Postgres and Redis once you run multiple workers
Large team: free, but you own the security review, sandbox isolation and on-call; there's no vendor support

Self-hosting ops:significant

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Score

95/100 · A+

Adoption30/30

Maintenance25/25

Community15/20

License15/15

Analysis10/10

A low score is not a verdict on quality. Young and niche tools start low by design. How we calculate scores

Trust Signals

High adoption: 79,690 starsActive community: 10,900 forksCommunity discussions enabledOrganization account (416 public repos)Notable author: 18,739 followers

License: MIT License

Use freely, including commercial. Just keep the license.

Commercial use: ✓ Yes

About

Owner: Bytedance Inc. (Organization)
Stars: 85,272
Forks: 12,012

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