Comment "open" for the link: a 17-year-old's free alternative to ManyChat, all stars came from Instagram
What it is An open-source, self-hosted Instagram tool: when someone comments a keyword on your post, it automatically DMs them a link, replacing ManyChat, which charges monthly.
Why it took off The 17-year-old author posted reels saying "comment open for the link." The demo itself was the promotion. Then creators who push "stop paying subscriptions, open-source alternatives" reshared it, and the story "a 17-year-old built a free version" spread.
BHow you could follow Don't build another IG comment-to-DM tool. Pick a different creator-paid monthly tool that only does one thing and build an open-source alternative. Distribute it using the product's own mechanics on short-video platforms, then feed it to money-saving creators to repost.
- Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-07-17 · 3,149 stars · 7 days +199
GitHub · stars Data 2026-10-09 → 2026-11-08 (31 days, 19 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one
OpenReply is an open-source, self-hosted tool that automatically sends a DM with a link when someone comments a keyword on an Instagram post. The repo was created in 2026 Jul 17, and by Nov 6 it had 3,131 stars and 1,420 forks. It has never made GitHub trending, and hardly anyone mentioned it on HN or X. Its stars came in one comment at a time from Instagram comment sections, and the traffic source was its own feature. For indie devs who want stars for an open-source project, the thing to copy is this distribution method, not the category.
One reel, 11k comments
Jul 2026, 22 — the Instagram account @devdiwen (about 12k followers, bio reads "17") posted a reel with one line of copy: "Comment "open" for the link. It takes around 30 mins of setup. #opensource". The reel hit 5.4K likes and 11.1K comments (per the Instagram page), twice as many comments as likes. The reason is simple: everyone who wants the link has to comment "open", and then gets an automatic DM with the GitHub repo URL.
In other words, he used the tool to promote the tool. The comment section is the funnel; the demo and the distribution are the same thing. The repo's first fork also showed up that day, and a week later forks had reached 100 (GitHub forks record).
Six days later, Steve Tan (@heystevetan), a creator who talks about "cutting subscriptions", posted: "A 17 year old got tired of paying for comment-to-DM automation, so he built the free version". 15.6K likes, 13.2K comments, still using "comment AUTO for the link". This one got even bigger than the author's own reel.
What it actually is
Creators on Instagram who sell courses or products often say in videos "comment LINK and I'll DM you", and behind that is usually a tool like ManyChat automating the DMs. ManyChat costs $14 to $69 a month, with price increases tied to contact count (manychat.com pricing page). Once a reel takes off, the bill goes up with it.
OpenReply only does this one thing, and the README opening is blunt: "Someone comments LINK on your reel, and OpenReply queues a DM with your link. That is the whole idea." The feature set isn't thin, though: links sent only after following, link click tracking, a DM with two buttons, Story replies can trigger it too, multiple accounts, team roles, and the interface is available in English, Traditional Chinese, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian. It only uses Meta's official private replies API, requires no password and does no scraping, which sets it apart from older IG bots that use private endpoints and risk account bans.
The catch is that you have to self-host it: create a Meta app, set up Postgres and Redis, and run a persistent worker. The README says "you deploy your own copy". That's how the fork rate reached 45%: the first deploy step is forking the repo, so the fork count is a closer measure of people who actually tried it than star count. How many never got it running, nobody outside can see.
Where the stars came from
| Channel | Volume | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| The author's own IG reel | 5.4K likes / 11.1K comments (07-22) | Used the product's own "comment for the link" mechanic |
| "Open-source alternative, stop paying subscriptions" creators | Steve Tan 15.6K likes; later also "Day 18 of Stop Paying", "GitHub Gems #02", "RIP Manychat" (October) | A long tail of posts keeps appearing, including in Spanish and Arabic |
| TikTok, YouTube | A few hundred to a couple thousand views each | Small reach, the copy is all "comment auto" |
| Search and comparison blogs | creatorflow.so (08-05) calls it "the strongest project in this category" | Searching "manychat alternative" puts it near the top |
| GitHub trending, HN, X, Product Hunt | None | Largely unknown in dev circles |
The star curve fits too: about 14 stars in the first 680 days (creatorflow.so, 08-05), Oct 9 2,569, Nov 6 3,116; from 10 through November it grew steadily by 20 to 50 stars a day, with a single-day peak of 52 (11-02, daily star records). No spike, no drop-off: a long tail built by creator-circle reposts one after another. The README also asks for a star along the way: "If this saves you a subscription or a weekend of building, a star on the repo genuinely helps other people find it."
Why this one
It wasn't the first. ChatbotX (end of 2024, about 1,081 stars), ZernFlow (February 2026, about 242 stars), and insta-p8 (January 2026, about 179 stars) all came earlier. It also started as a fork of Anish Raj's instagram-comment-to-dm, with the billing layer removed; the original author is now its second-largest contributor. Before it appeared in July 2026, the manychat-alternative tag on GitHub covered 8 repos with about 113 stars in total (creatorflow.so count).
The rival libraries weren't weaker on features. Nobody was pushing them on Instagram through reels. OpenReply added three things:
- The author is part of the user base. The users are IG creators, the author is an IG creator, and the demo video is itself a real use case.
- A pain point you can explain in one sentence. "Why should I pay monthly just to turn comments into DMs?" Reposters don't have to explain anything.
- A ready-made story. "A 17-year-old built the free version" can be posted as-is by money-saving accounts.
Focusing on one thing, using only official APIs, and having enough features made reposters willing to push it and users willing to fork it, but distribution is what actually carried it.
Others are already copying it
From August on, similar open-source repos kept arriving: openinstadm (08-11,35 stars, posted on Reddit r/sideprojects), ig-comment-dm (Cloudflare Worker version), instabot, hushreply (10-04), director (10-09), instagram-dm-funnel, instagram-mcp-server (10-26), and some people deployed forks as sites. None are big, but the "open-source ManyChat alternative" position is already held by OpenReply, and both search and creator reposts point to it. Building another one of the same kind will be hard to get the same stars for.
The author hasn't built a hosted version. The money comes from the sponsor Zernio: the README and docs include links with tracking parameters, recommending users pay for Zernio to connect Instagram and skip applying for their own Meta app (sponsorship amount not disclosed). The hardest step in deployment is exactly where the sponsor link sits.
If it were you
One-line verdict: don't build another Instagram comment-to-DM tool; copy its distribution approach and apply it to a single feature that creators are already paying for every month.
- Who it suits: developers who have a small presence on IG, TikTok or Xiaohongshu, or who know a few bloggers in the "money-saving tools / open-source gems" niche; people who can split a SaaS feature out and make it genuinely usable.
- Who it doesn't suit: people who only hang out on GitHub and in dev circles and won't make videos. This project's stars came almost entirely from outside dev circles; posting only on HN and waiting for trending won't work.
- How to do it: pick a tool creators pay for monthly but mostly use for one feature (link pages, booking, comment giveaways, DM forms, email capture, inferred), make it open-source, self-hosted, and do only that one thing; keep deployment as painless as possible, with a one-click deploy button and an "ask your AI assistant to set it up" prompt, which OpenReply did. Localization also works: its interface already has Traditional Chinese, Portuguese and Russian, but I didn't see any comparable tool aimed specifically at the Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian or Chinese creator ecosystems.
- How to get users: let the product be its own demo. When you post videos, collect links using the product's own mechanic and treat the comment section as the funnel; then pitch "XX subscription, cut out" with your own story to accounts like "Stop Paying" and "GitHub Gems"; and at the same time claim the "<tool name> alternative" search term and the matching GitHub tag.
- When to move: "open-source alternative" videos are still coming out steadily, with new ones in October; once every popular SaaS has a widely shared open-source version, the window closes. The sooner you pick a feature nobody has claimed, the better.
- Signs you've misread it: your demo video gets lots of comments but your repo's stars don't grow, meaning commenters want "free to use", not "go star it"; or the platform tightens its official API (for example, Meta launches its own comment-to-DM feature or restricts private replies), which removes the foundation under this kind of tool.
Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report
- Competitors
Name Where Launched Scale How it differs from this one ManyChat Web Around 2015 Category leader (scale unverified), $14–69/month, priced up by contact count Charges subscriptions and rises with usage; OpenReply is free without caps but must be self-hosted LinkDM / InstantDM / CreatorFlow / Inro Web 2023–2026 Small to mid-sized (unverified) Hosted, works out of the box; OpenReply is free but requires setting up a Meta app ChatbotX Open source 2024-12 About 1,081 stars Omnichannel AI chatbot, broad and general; OpenReply only does IG comment-to-DM ZernFlow Open source 2026-02 About 242 stars 7 platforms plus a flow builder, relies on the Zernio API; Zernio also sponsors OpenReply insta-p8 Open source 2026-01 About 179 stars Same positioning, but without the author's built-in IG traffic instagram-comment-to-dm(Anish Raj) Open source 2026 H1 Small OpenReply's upstream, with a billing layer; OpenReply removed billing and open-sourced it Selenium / private-API IG bots Open source Years A few thousand stars combined Private endpoints carry account-ban risk; OpenReply only uses official private replies - Where users come from
- Verified Author's Instagram reel (comment for the link): @devdiwen 2026-07-22 reel "Comment open for the link" 5.4K likes, 11.1K comments; forks also started that day
- Verified Creator reposts of open-source alternatives on IG: Steve Tan 2026-07-28 reel "A 17 year old got tired of paying…" 15.6K likes, 13.2K comments; also Day 18 of Stop Paying, GitHub Gems #02, RIP Manychat, and others
- Verified TikTok / YouTube secondary accounts: TikHub search turned up vitalykorovitz, tech.markkk, itsmarbuilds (Spanish) and others, with a few hundred to a couple thousand views; a YouTube JASPER video has 486 views
- Verified SEO and comparison blogs: creatorflow.so, tech4ssd.com, memorie.in, LinkedIn; when searching manychat alternative, its repo ranks near the top
- Verified README asks for stars: the README's own words: a star on the repo genuinely helps other people find it
- Inferred HN / X / Product Hunt / GitHub trending: HN Algolia search finds nothing, x-radar shows 120 posts in the last 0 days, trending_days_any=0
OpenReply (diwenne/openreply): why it took off
In one sentence: 17-year-old indie developer diwen huang (Instagram @devdiwen, about 12k followers) built an open-source, self-hosted ManyChat alternative that does one thing: on Instagram, a comment keyword triggers an automatic DM with the link. It took off because it spread on Instagram using the product's own mechanic ("comment open for the link"), then got reposted by a group of creator accounts that focus on "open-source alternatives / stop paying subscriptions". On GitHub it never made trending, and its stars came almost entirely from Instagram.
1. Basic data
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Repo created | 2026-07-17 | GitHub API |
| Star / Fork | 3,131 / 1,420 (2026-11-06 API live); data cards 3,116 / 1,406 | GitHub API, data card |
| Growth | About 14 stars in the first 680 days; 10-09 was 2,569; 11-06 was 3,116; 10–November steady gains of +20 to 50 per day, single-day peak +52 (11-02) | creatorflow.so 2026-08-05 posts; github repo_day |
| GitHub trending | Never made trending (trending_days_any=0) | Data card |
| Author | The GitHub repo has only 1 repos and 87 followers; bio reads "@devdiwen on insta". Instagram is about 12k followers, bio "17 / building @smashspeedai @theclutchapp" | GitHub API; Instagram search summary |
| Contributors | diwenne has 109 commits, im-anishraj 28 (original project author), plus a dozen or so external contributors | GitHub API |
Why the fork rate is as high as 45%: the product can only be run self-hosted. The README says "your deployed fork"; docs/setup.md tells users to "select your fork of this repo" on Railway / Vercel. So forking is a required step of deployment, not inflated numbers. The fork timeline fits too: the first fork appeared on 2026-07-22 (the day the creator posted the reel), there were 100 by 7-29, and roughly a hundred a week after that through November (GitHub forks API, sampled by time). Fork count is a closer proxy for people who actually tried to install it than stars.
II. Competitors
| Competitors | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from OpenReply |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ManyChat | Web SaaS | Around 2015 | Category leader (user count unverified); paid at $14/$29/$69 per month, with surcharges by active contacts | Subscription pricing, billed per contact, so the bill jumps when a reel goes viral. OpenReply is free with no caps, but you have to host it yourself |
| LinkDM / InstantDM / CreatorFlow / Inro, etc. | Web SaaS | 2023–2026 | Small to mid-sized (unverified); LinkDM's free tier covers 1 accounts and 1000 DMs per month | Managed and ready to use out of the box; OpenReply takes an afternoon to set up a Meta app |
| ChatbotX(ChatbotXIO/ChatbotX) | Open source | 2024-12 | About 1,081 stars | All channels, AI flows, broad and full-featured; OpenReply only does IG comment-to-DM |
| ZernFlow(zernio-dev/zernflow) | Open source + cloud | 2026-02 | About 242 stars | 7 platforms, visual flow builder, must connect via Zernio's API; Zernio is also a sponsor of OpenReply |
| insta-p8(ayuuxh2) | Open source | 2026-01 | About 179 stars | Same category, positioned as an "open-source ManyChat alternative", but nobody is promoting it |
| InstaAuto | Open source | 2026-01 | About 72 stars (2026-07) | Has a hosted version, but you first need to apply for Meta tester access |
| instagram-comment-to-dm(Anish Raj) | Open source | 2026 H1 | Small | OpenReply openly says it was forked from this, with the billing layer removed; the original author is now OpenReply's second-largest contributor |
| Many IG bots built on Selenium / private APIs | Open source | Years | A few thousand stars combined | Use private endpoints and are prone to account bans; OpenReply only uses Meta's official private replies endpoint |
Per creatorflow.so 2026-07: at the time, the manychat-alternative topic on GitHub had 8 repos in total with about 113 stars, all created in 2026. So before OpenReply, the category was basically empty in the open-source world.
III. Growth levers (where users come from)
- The creator themselves used "comment for the link" in their reels (confirmed). 2026-07-22, @devdiwen posted a reel: "Comment "open" for the link. It takes around 30mins of setup. #opensource", with 5.4K likes and 11.1K comments (Instagram page). Comments are double the likes, which is exactly what the mechanism produces: the comment section itself became the funnel, and the funnel runs on the product's own feature, so demo and distribution are one thing.
- "Open-source alternative" creator reposts (confirmed). 2026-07-28, Steve Tan (@heystevetan) posted the reel "A 17 year old got tired of paying for comment-to-DM automation, so he built the free version", with 15.6K likes and 13.2K comments, also using "Comment AUTO" to gate the link. A long tail followed: Sai Santosh Kumar "Day 18 of Stop Paying", okvyass "GitHub Gems #02 — OpenReply" (10-23), officialmateiparvu "RIP Manychat" (10-20), the "LARP OR LEGIT" series, an Arabic-language AI account on Threads, and a Facebook video "I stumbled across this on GitHub…".
- TikTok / YouTube (confirmed, but small). On TikTok: vitalykorovitz, tech.markkk (both "comment auto" pitches, late July), itsmarbuilds (Spanish "comenta OPEN", October), ke_yoni, with a few hundred to two thousand views. On YouTube, JASPER's video (10-08) has 486 views, plus a review from TMSProductions.
- SEO and comparison blogs (confirmed). creatorflow.so (08-05, with a slightly competitive tone, estimating self-hosting costs $26–63 per month in total), tech4ssd.com deployment tutorials, memorie.in, LinkedIn posts. Search "manychat alternative" on Google and OpenReply's repo ranks near the top.
- The README asks for stars directly (confirmed). The original line: "If this saves you a subscription or a weekend of building, a star on the repo genuinely helps other people find it."
- Channels not found. HN (Algolia finds nothing), X (x-radar: 120 posts in the last 0 days), Product Hunt, and GitHub trending show nothing. It did not take off through developer circles.
- Monetization (confirmed). The sponsor is Zernio. The README and docs/zernio.md carry utm links, recommending users connect through paid Zernio to skip applying for a Meta app themselves. There is no hosted version from the author; the money comes back through the sponsorship. The author is also building smashspeedai and theclutchapp.
4. Why it made the list
- The pain point is clear and easy to spread: ManyChat costs $14–69 per month and rises with contacts. For small creators, it means "I just want comment-to-DM, but I have to pay a subscription." A line like "cancel your ManyChat subscription" makes the point instantly (Steve Tan's copy, the README's "Why this exists").
- The product's use case is the distribution play: the people who use this feature (IG creators) already sell through "comment XX for the link", so showing OpenReply in a reel fits naturally. Both the creator's account and the reposting accounts drew tens of thousands of comments.
- An easy story to tell: "A 17-year-old built a free version", which creator accounts are happy to use as content.
- The open-source category was empty before: before 2026-07, the manychat-alternative topic had about 113 stars in total, so it held the keyword with almost no competition.
- Compliance is clearly explained: it only uses Meta's official private replies endpoint, with no passwords and no data scraping. That sets it apart from high-star bots built on private APIs, and blog authors are willing to recommend it (creatorflow calls it "the strongest project in this category").
- Features are sufficient: follow gate (link is sent only after following), link tracking, two buttons, multiple accounts, multiple roles, Story reply triggers, four UI languages, and an MCP interface. It is not an empty demo.
5. Differentiation
ChatbotX, ZernFlow, and insta-p8 also offered "open-source ManyChat alternatives" and came earlier, but they are larger and broader (all channels, flow builder), and none of them had the author's own IG audience. OpenReply differs in three ways: it does only IG comment-to-DM, it uses only official APIs, and its author is inside the Instagram creator scene. The last one is what made it take off, meaning distribution: the other libraries weren't worse in features, but nobody was making reels about them on IG. The product's own differences (focused, compliant, functional enough) gave reposters a reason to share and users a reason to fork, but they are not why it took off.
6. Visibility and copycats
- Visibility: circulating in small circles. It is shared a lot in Instagram / TikTok creator circles around "open-source alternatives, save on subscriptions", and there are a few SEO blogs; but it never made GitHub trending, HN, or X, and developer circles mostly don't know about it. The author has not published revenue, and there is no hosted version to pay for.
- Copycats already exist: Xeven777/openinstadm (2026-08-11,35 stars, posted on Reddit r/sideprojects), CharanMN7/ig-comment-dm (08-15, Cloudflare Worker version), juancadile/instabot, KenKaiii/oh-daddy, lakpriya1s/hushreply (10-04), ituzov/director (10-09), LdwS123/instagram-dm-funnel, commentkeyword/instagram-mcp-server (10-26); some people even deployed forks as live sites, such as mkt.fvr.mx.
VII. What to take away
- A tool built for creators, distributed through the tool's own mechanism: the demo is the distribution, and the comment section is the funnel.
- "Open-source alternative to X" plus a "young author" story is exactly the material that "save money, open-source gems" accounts on IG / TikTok love to repost, so it can be pitched directly to those accounts.
- An open-source project with a sponsor from a hosted service (Zernio lets users skip Meta review), where the hardest step for users is also the monetization entry point.
- Claim a nearly empty GitHub topic and "xxx alternative" search term, and stay narrow and specialized.
VIII. Unknowns
- The GitHub stargazers API was rate-limited this time, so there is no day-by-day star curve. The peak distribution from July to early October is inferred from creatorflow's "14 days 680 stars" and the fork timeline.
- The amount of Zernio's sponsorship and whether the author has other income are unverified.
- How many of the 1,400 forks are actually running and sending DMs is unknown; creatorflow notes that using it on others' accounts requires Meta business verification, which limits agency use cases.
- ManyChat's user count and the scale of SaaS players like LinkDM are unverified; whether Meta plans to ship native comment-to-DM was not found.
Sources: github.com/diwenne/openreply and docs/setup.md, docs/zernio.md; GitHub API (repo / user / forks / contributors / search, 2026-11-06); instagram.com/reel/DbGnKPguxYu, /reel/DbVq4mwz38L, /reel/Deu6U_Wtt1b, /p/De2AcBlJamn, /reel/DdiJP3YAgDH; creatorflow.so/blog/open-source-instagram-dm-automation (2026-08-05); zernflow.com; youtube.com/watch?v=GINvMA2FKzk; TikHub TikTok search "openreply"; x-radar search; HN Algolia; manychat.com/pricing; our GitHub repo_day (data card).