cmuxvsCoder
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
cmux
Manaflow · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
6.62 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.3
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.5
- Longevity
- 6.0
“A terminal for coordinating many agents on exactly one operating system, so the agent wars are settled by what laptop you were issued.”
Coder
Coder Technologies · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
7.69 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.8
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 8.2
“It sells you the room your agent works in, which is the oldest business in software wearing new vocabulary.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | cmux | Coder |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | cloud, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux, windows, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | Yes |
| Git operations | NoThe sidebar displays branch and pull request status but cmux performs no git operations itself. | Yes |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesNative panes for Claude Code Teams and oh-my-opencode orchestration; cmux runs and watches the agents rather than running an agent loop of its own. | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Amp, Aider) | any |
| Bring your own model | No | YesCoder runs whichever agent and model the team chooses; the AI Governance gateway brokers the LLM calls rather than supplying a model. |
| Local models | No | YesThe whole platform is self-hosted, so an on-premises or in-VPC model endpoint can be used through the AI Governance gateway. |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | free | mixed |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | No | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later | AGPL-3.0 |
| GitHub stars | 27,557 | 16,807 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | cmux | Coder | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.5 | Coder — Pick it when agents must not run on laptops; pick Ona if you want the same isolation without operating the platform that provides it. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.8 | Coder — Adopting this means running a workspace platform, a gateway and the agents inside them, which is infrastructure staffing before it is a coding tool. |
| El Profesor | 6.8 | 7.5 | Coder — Observation happens at the protocol boundary rather than inside the agent, which is why it works for agents the platform did not write. |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 8.0 | Coder — A copyleft core with a per-user Premium tier and a custom enterprise tier, and the licence is the moat because it blocks anyone hosting this against them. |
| La Jefa | 5.5 | 7.3 | Coder — The premium tier is priced per user annually with no published figure, which is contact sales wearing a plan name, and everything else here answers my questionnaire. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.8 | Coder — AGPL-3.0, a one-line install script, its own protocol server plus an API, and every workspace runs on hardware I racked with a model endpoint I chose. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.