AI Reviewvscubic
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
AI Review
Nikita Filonov · Code review agent
#52OSS
Panel
7.05 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 8.0
- Longevity
- 6.2
“It replies inside your existing review threads, so the argument you lost in March can now continue without you.”
cubic
cubic · Code review agent
#88MCP
Panel
6.04 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.8
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 6.0
“The free tier is twenty pull request reviews a month, which is either a whole team or one Dependabot.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | AI Review | cubic |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Code review agent | Code review agent |
| Runs | local, cloud | cloud, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | web, macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | YesOnly in agent mode, where the model runs read-only shell commands such as ls, cat, rg and git to explore the repository before reviewing. | No |
| Multi-file edits | No | Yes |
| Git operations | YesIt reads diffs from and writes comments and thread replies to six hosted VCS platforms; it does not commit or push. | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, Ollama, AWS Bedrock, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI | OpenAI, Anthropic, Claude Code |
| Bring your own model | Yes | No |
| Local models | YesOllama is a first-class provider. | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | seat |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $30/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | No |
| License | Apache-2.0 | proprietary |
| GitHub stars | 585 | n/a |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | AI Review | cubic | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.0 | AI Review — Pick it if your code lives on Gitea or Azure DevOps and every review bot you tried only speaks GitHub; pick a hosted reviewer if GitHub is all you have. |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.5 | cubic — Background agents give the GitHub App write access so the reviewer can commit fixes; the docs limit that scope to fix branches and promise never to push to main. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 6.5 | AI Review — Inline, context and summary prompts are all user-supplied, so the output distribution is a property of a team's configuration rather than of the tool being evaluated. |
| La Inversora | 6.3 | 6.3 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 7.3 | 6.0 | AI Review — It runs inside the CI job we already pay for, with no seat licence and no vendor holding our diffs, which is the shortest procurement conversation of the quarter. |
| El Hacker | 7.8 | 4.0 | AI Review — Apache-2.0, Ollama as a first-class provider, and config from YAML, JSON or environment variables, so a fully local reviewer is a file I write rather than a plan I request. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.