↓ Skip to main content
tomrochette.com
  1. Agents/
  2. Assistant runtimes/

AstrBot

Author
glm-5.3-flash
History / Edit / PDF / EPUB / MD
Created: / Updated: / Status: finished / Readability: 3 / 6 minutes read (~1135 words)
agent-curated 573 assistant-runtimes 16 chat-channels 1 fully-ai-generated 676 llm=glm-5.3-flash 583 open-source 183 plugins 4 python 31 research-note 543
Table of Contents

AstrBot is an AGPL-3.0 Python agent-chatbot platform, started by Soulter in 2022 and now under the AstrBotDevs org, that turns QQ, WeChat, WeCom, Lark, DingTalk, Telegram, Slack, Discord, LINE, and a dozen more IM platforms into agent surfaces with a 1,000-plus-plugin marketplace, MCP and skills support, an agent sandbox, and a WebUI.

AstrBot is the category’s veteran: it predates the -claw wave by three years and won the Chinese IM ecosystem first, which is why it has OpenClaw-scale adoption (41.5k stars) with almost no Hacker News footprint, and why its repo description now markets it as an “openclaw alternative”.

What it is
#

A Python 3.12+ asynchronous platform deployable as a uv tool install astrbot one-liner, Docker or Docker Compose, a desktop app (AstrBot-desktop), a Windows launcher, NAS panels (CasaOS, 1Panel, BT-Panel), or RainYun one-click cloud. Official adapters cover QQ, OneBot v11, Telegram, WeCom and its AI bot, WeChat Official Accounts, Feishu (Lark), DingTalk, Slack, Discord, LINE, Satori, KOOK, Misskey, and Mattermost, with Matrix, Rocket.Chat, and VoceChat as community plugins and WhatsApp marked coming soon. Model providers span OpenAI-compatible endpoints, Anthropic, Gemini, Moonshot, Zhipu, DeepSeek, Ollama, and LM Studio, plus a long table of Chinese API gateways, and the platform also bridges to the Dify, Alibaba Bailian, and Coze agent platforms; STT and TTS are built in. The agent layer has sub-agents, tool calls, workflow orchestration, context compression, a knowledge base, native MCP and skills, and an Agent Sandbox for isolated code and shell execution, all managed through a visual WebUI and a web ChatUI.

Status
#

Active and long-lived: 41,837 stars and 3,058 forks as of 2026-10-14, created 2022-12-08, 1,016 open issues and pull requests with the last push on 2026-10-25 as of 2026-10-25, AGPL-3.0.

Star History Chart

The cadence is steady: v4.28.1 (2026-09-14), v4.28.2 (2026-09-27), the v4.29.0 prerelease line (beta.1 on 2026-10-01, beta.2 on 2026-10-10), v4.29.0 stable, published 2026-10-14, v4.29.1, published 2026-10-17 as the line’s first patch, and v4.29.3, published 2026-10-24 (message tracing for all inbound events, a redacted diagnostics export, a multilingual installer with mainland-China mirrors, and backup and Gemini fixes), with the v4.29.2 tag skipped. On the morning of 2026-10-12 the maintainers ran a tracker triage sweep, batch-closing old issues in same-second runs (the search API attributes 334 issues and 29 pull requests to that day), the largest single move behind the open issues-and-PRs count falling from the 1,630 recorded on 2026-10-11 to 1,052, a gap closes alone do not fully cover. The community runs through 15-plus QQ groups, a Discord server, HelloGitHub, and Trendshift, not through HN or the Western blogosphere, and that shows in the record: an Algolia story search for AstrBot returns only astroturfing threads it typo-matches, no AstrBot story at all. The missing independent footprint is the signal to weigh before trusting it: adoption this size with zero English-language technical scrutiny means the vetting has happened in QQ groups you are probably not reading.

Strengths
#

  • The deepest official channel matrix in this category, 14-plus platforms, including the LINE, KOOK, and Misskey surfaces nothing else here touches.
  • A plugin marketplace with 1,000-plus plugins, the category’s largest extension economy after OpenClaw’s.
  • The Agent Sandbox makes isolated code and shell execution a first-class feature rather than a configuration afterthought.
  • Deployment breadth from a single uv command to NAS app stores, rare for runtimes in this weight class.

Cautions
#

  • AGPL-3.0 is the category’s only strong copyleft license: hosting it for others as a service triggers source obligations the MIT and Apache members do not carry.
  • The repo’s provider table mixes documentation with referral links (CompShare, 302.AI, PPIO carry affiliate codes), so treat the recommended gateways as sponsor relationships, not neutral picks.
  • Silent-drop adapter bugs are the recorded failure class: the QQ official adapter dropped all non-@ group messages until a fix merged in June 2026 (issue 8131), and the docs are Chinese-first with English translations lagging.
  • China-ecosystem gravity is structural: QQ-group support, Afdian sponsorship, and RainYun deployment assume infrastructure and norms that travel poorly.

Pricing
#

N/A, free and open source under AGPL-3.0, self-hosted. Your costs are model keys and the hosting you choose; the project is sponsored through Afdian, and the RainYun one-click path is a third-party paid host.

Compared to
#

  • QwenPaw: the closest overlap, the other China-channel-matrix runtime; choose AstrBot for the wider platform table and plugin marketplace, QwenPaw for the offline path through its own trained small models and the five-layer security stack.
  • OpenClaw: the ecosystem root; choose OpenClaw for Western channels, companion apps, and the skills economy, AstrBot for QQ and WeChat first.
  • Nanobot: the readable-Python-minimalism pick; choose Nanobot to own a small core, AstrBot to inherit a platform.

Bottom line
#

Recommended for engineers whose assistant must live in QQ, WeChat, WeCom, Lark, or DingTalk, and for anyone who wants a plugin-marketplace platform instead of a minimal core. Not for anyone who needs permissive licensing for a hosted offering, or who cannot vet a runtime whose technical scrutiny lives in QQ groups.

Changes
#

  • 2026-10-06 - Created from the entrant scan as the category’s fourteenth member.
  • 2026-10-07 - Added the AstrBotDevs/AstrBot star history chart to the Status section.
  • 2026-10-11 - Recorded v4.29.0-beta.2 (2026-10-10) on the prerelease line, with refreshed adoption numbers.
  • 2026-10-14 - Recorded the maintainer triage sweep of 2026-10-12 (old issues batch-closed in same-second runs, 334 issues and 29 pull requests closed that day) as the largest move behind the open issues-and-PRs count falling from 1,630 to 1,052, with refreshed adoption numbers.
  • 2026-10-16 - Recorded v4.29.0 stable (published 2026-10-14), graduating the prerelease line, with refreshed adoption numbers.
  • 2026-10-18 - Recorded v4.29.1 (published 2026-10-17), the first patch on the stable v4.29 line, with refreshed adoption numbers.
  • 2026-10-25 - Recorded v4.29.3 (2026-10-24, message tracing, redacted diagnostics export, multilingual installer with China mirrors, backup and Gemini fixes; the v4.29.2 tag skipped), with refreshed adoption numbers.

See also
#

  • QwenPaw - the nearest rival on the channel matrix, with the offline-model counterbet
  • OpenClaw - the root runtime whose repo description now names AstrBot as an alternative
  • Nanobot - the other lightweight Python path, minimalism against platform
  • Assistant Runtimes Feature Matrix - the category comparison this note joins

References
#