Comparison
A self-hosted, open-source alternative to Factory.ai
Factory.ai proved the “software factory” category is real. It is also closed, hosted, and locked to its own Droid agent. agents-cli is the open counter-position: run whatever agent you already use, on machines you control.
Updated July 1, 2026
$ agents teams start refactor-auth
The category Factory created
Factory.ai sells an agent-native SDLC platform: its Droids take a task, work across a repo, and open a PR, with a hosted control plane and remote compute. Enterprises pay for it, which settles whether the category is real. It is.
The shape of the product is the opening. It is closed source, it runs on Factory's cloud by default, and the agent is theirs. That is a familiar setup with a familiar counter-position — the open, self-hostable one.
Where it stops
- Hosted by default. On-premise / air-gapped is an enterprise, contact-sales path, not the default you install.
- Bring-your-own-model is not bring-your-own-privacy. Factory's own Droid Computers page describes BYOM compute connecting outbound to Factory's backend.
- One agent. You run Droids. You do not run Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor through Factory. The agent is part of the lock-in.
None of this makes Factory.ai wrong. It makes it a hosted platform — a different thing from a tool that runs on your PATH.
On your machines
agents-cli spawns whatever agent you already have — Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, Droid, OpenCode — as a local subprocess, in a git worktree, on hardware you own. Parallel work runs as a team of those subprocesses, each isolated in its own worktree so they do not collide.
When one laptop is not enough, dispatch a task to another machine you control — a spare Mac, a VPS, a box on your tailnet. The source is cloned into a worktree on that machine, the agent runs there, and the logs stream back. No third party in the middle; your code never leaves infrastructure you own.
Side by side
| Capability | agents-cli | Factory.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Source code stays on your machinesFactory: on-premise is enterprise, contact-sales | yes | partial |
| Run any agent (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor)Factory runs its own Droid agent | yes | no |
| Open source (MIT) | yes | no |
| Bring your own compute — a spare Mac, a VPS, a cluster | yes | partial |
| Pin agent versions per project | yes | no |
| Managed cloud, support SLAs, enterprise onboardingthis is where Factory is strong | no | yes |
Factory.ai capabilities summarized from its public product, pricing, and Droid Computers pages as of July 2026. Check current terms before relying on any single row.
When Factory is the right call
If you want a managed platform with support, an enterprise onboarding motion, and a team that operates the control plane for you, Factory.ai is built for that and agents-cli is not. agents-cli is per-developer infrastructure: you run it, you host it, you own the uptime. The trade is control for convenience, both directions.
The question that decides it is narrow: does your source need to stay on machines you control, and do you want to keep the agent you already know? If yes to either, the self-hosted, agent-agnostic path is the fit.
Try it
curl -fsSL agents-cli.sh/install.sh | sh