cmuxvsOpenClaw
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
6.60 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.”
OpenClaw
OpenClaw Foundation · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.88 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 7.2
“Warelay, Clawdbot, Moltbot, OpenClaw: three renames in ten weeks, one of them courtesy of Anthropic's trademark lawyers.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | cmux | OpenClaw |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux, windows |
| 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. | No |
| Browser control | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Amp, Aider) | OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, GitHub Copilot, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp |
| Bring your own model | No | Yes |
| Local models | No | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | free | byok |
| 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 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 27,557 | 391,182 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | cmux | OpenClaw | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.3 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.5 | no preference |
| El Profesor | 6.8 | 7.0 | OpenClaw — A gateway on the host routes tool calls into per-agent containers over Docker, Podman, SSH or OpenShell, and MCP runs in both directions; no benchmark is published. |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 6.3 | OpenClaw — A non-profit foundation formed in February 2026 after the creator joined OpenAI, 388,000 stars and no revenue line; nothing to acquire and nothing to run out of. |
| La Jefa | 5.5 | 5.3 | cmux — It runs on macOS and nothing else, which decides this before cost, and there is no headless mode, no SSO and no audit trail to discuss afterwards. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.8 | OpenClaw — MIT, an mcp.servers block with per-server toolFilter, Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM and llama.cpp as first-class providers, and it serves MCP too; this one is mine. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.