OnavsBackground Agents (Open-Inspect)
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Ona
Ona (OpenAI) · Autonomous SWE
#31MCP
Panel
6.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.7
- Usefulness
- 7.5
- Cost
- 5.0
- Longevity
- 7.3
“Automations fan a fleet of agents across your codebase on a schedule, so now the on-call rotation includes the robots.”
Background Agents (Open-Inspect)
Cole Murray · Autonomous SWE
#126OSS
Panel
6.45 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 6.7
- Longevity
- 6.0
“It supports multiplayer sessions, so several people can now watch the same agent make the same decision in real time.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Ona | Background Agents (Open-Inspect) |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Autonomous SWE | Autonomous SWE |
| Runs | cloud, sandbox | sandbox, cloud |
| Platforms | web, macos, linux, windows | linux, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | Yes |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesAutomations run fleets of agents triggered by pull requests, schedules or webhooks. | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI Codex | Anthropic Claude, OpenAI Codex, xAI Grok, OpenCode Zen |
| Bring your own model | No | Yes |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | mixed | byok |
| Starts at | $20/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | No | Yes |
| Bring your own key | YesA Codex subscription can be connected to a Core plan. | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | No | Yes |
| License | proprietary | MIT |
| GitHub stars | n/a | 3,303 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Ona | Background Agents (Open-Inspect) | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 6.8 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.3 | 6.0 | Ona — The recommended backbone narrowed to one lab's agent and the earlier alternative is documented as deprecated for Enterprise, so model diversity here is ending, not expanding. |
| El Profesor | 7.3 | 7.0 | Ona — Verification has a real substrate: the agent works inside an environment carrying your toolchain, permissions and network access, so a claim can be executed rather than argued. |
| La Inversora | 7.8 | 6.3 | Ona — This was Gitpod, renamed in 2025, and it is now part of the OpenAI Platform, so the cap-table question every buyer asks has already been answered. |
| La Jefa | 7.3 | 5.3 | Ona — Core starts at $20 a month with 80 to 2,200 compute units and top-ups from $10 per 40, and Enterprise runs inside our VPC with kernel-level policy and audit trails. |
| El Hacker | 4.5 | 7.3 | Background Agents (Open-Inspect) — MIT and self-hosted end to end, with agents working inside full environments that carry the language runtimes, version control and an editor, and no protocol client anywhere. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.