AI · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to I built an open-source alternative to Claude Cowork
Hey HN, A few months ago, I tried to automate some of my work with the popular AI agent OpenClaw, and then I quickly realized how difficult it is to get it to work with APIs and third-party services securely, which is essential for a lot of work-related tasks. Then I realized OpenClaw is more of a personal assistant and it was not designed to get actual work done as a coworker. So I started to build Valmis, an alternative to OpenClaw that works with more than 100 apps and services, with security being the priority. Valmis addresses the security issue by designing a proxy system: dockerized…
Valmis is an open-source AI agent platform designed to automate work tasks while prioritizing security. It integrates with over 100 apps and services, making it suitable for teams needing reliable automation with… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Prices are shown for the 2 we have checked on their own sites, 2 of them free or with a free tier.
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Buda▲197Run a full AI agent team in the cloud — no hardware, no setup. Persistent memory, browser automation, parallel agents. The OpenClaw alternative built for teams. Start free.
May 2026 · buda.im · its alternatives →
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We are Bailey and Robbie and we are working on Klaus (https://klausai.com/): hosted OpenClaw that is secure and powerful out of the box. Running OpenClaw requires setting up a cloud VM or local container (a pain) or giving OpenClaw root access to your machine (insecure). Many basic integrations (eg Slack, Google Workspace) require you to create your own OAuth app. We make running OpenClaw simple by giving each user their own EC2 instance, preconfigured with keys for OpenRouter, AgentMail, and Orthogonal. And we have OAuth apps to make it easy to integrate with Slack and Google…
Mar 2026 · klausai.com · its alternatives →
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Switchfree▲527Bring any AI agent into Slack, Teams & Discord. Open-source.
Aug 2026 · flintai.dev · its alternatives →
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BetterClaw▲307Deploy AI Agent, 60 seconds & $0 forever
Aug 2026 · betterclaw.io · its alternatives →
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ZooClaw▲290Your proactive team of AI specialists in one place
Apr 2026 · zoowork.ai · its alternatives →
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Clark▲264Hey folks, I've been building Clark solo, with the aim to match Manus agent (I really like it!) in features and capabilities, but also in its relentless ability to just complete tasks while using browser, computer etc. So far I think I've achieved 1:1 core feature parity: 1) computer use agent 2) browser use in same thread 3) wide and deep research - clark calls clark 4) integration with google tools Would love to have community feedback and for you to try it out, a couple thousand people already using it daily for very broad use cases. You can use this referral link, that hopefully works…
Jul 2026 · clarkchat.com · its alternatives →
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CoChat▲261Openclaw for Teams that is secure, collaborative, autonomous
Mar 2026 · cochat.ai · its alternatives →
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Atomic▲140Hey HN, I’ve been building Atom (https://github.com/rush86999/atom), an open-source, self-hosted AI automation platform. I built this because while tools like OpenClaw are excellent for one-off scripts and personal tasks, I found them difficult to use for complex business workflows (e.g., managing invoices or SaaS ops). The main issue was State Blindness: the agent would fire a command and assume it worked, without "seeing" if the UI or state actually updated. I just shipped a new architecture to solve this called Canvas AI Accessibility. The Technical Concept: Instead of…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
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13,000+ MCP servers, skills & plugins for AI coding agents
Jul 2026 · codexmarketplaces.com · its alternatives →
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Open Agents▲161OpenAgents - The collaboration OS for AI agents. Contribute to openagents-org/openagents development by creating an account on GitHub.
Apr 2026 · open-agents.dev · its alternatives →
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JDoodleClaw▲120The most user-friendly OpenClaw. Securely hosted.
Mar 2026 · jdoodle.com · its alternatives →
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VidClaw▲102I run an OpenClaw agent named Jimmy. Jimmy handles SEO tracking, content writing, and code tasks for my projects. Managing it all entirely through chat got messy fast. Thus I built VidClaw. It's a self-hosted dashboard that gives you: - Kanban board where you drag tasks and the agent picks them up automatically - Real-time token usage - Model switching - Soul editor - Skills manager - Activity calendar The whole thing binds to localhost only — you access it through an SSH tunnel. No accounts, no cloud, no tracking. Your data stays on your machine. Stack: React + Vite + Tailwind on the…
Feb 2026 · vidclaw.com · its alternatives →
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Skip the setup and run OpenClaw & Hermes, fully managed
Aug 2026 · cloudways.com · its alternatives →
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Open Comet▲117The autonomous AI browser agent for deep research & tasks
Apr 2026 · opencomet.onrender.com · its alternatives →
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Zero-config hosting to launch specialized AI teams instantly
Feb 2026 · yourclaw.cloud · its alternatives →
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ClawSimple▲113Hi HN, I’ve been following the OpenClaw project and noticed frictions for non-expert users: most discussions and docs are too nerdy... Installing OpenClaw costs lots of brain cells. Uninstalling costs even more! Besides, security/privacy risks exist for non-technical users. So I built ClawSimple, a tool that make deploy and run your own OpenClaw-based assistant easier. With ClawSimple you can: - Spin up one or multiple OpenClaw robots in a few minutes; - Focus on using the assistant instead of wrestling with deployment details. For people who don’t want to pay for a managed service, I…
Feb 2026 · clawsimple.com · its alternatives →
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We recently started to use agents to update some documentation across our codebase on a weekly basis, and everything quickly turned into cron jobs, logs, and terminal output. it worked, but was hard to tell what agents were doing, why something failed, or whether a workflow was actually progressing. We thought it would be more interesting to treat agents as long-lived workers with state and responsibilities and explicit handoffs. Something you can actually see and reason about, instead of just tailing logs. So we built Clawe, a small coordination layer on top of OpenClaw that lets agent…
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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A clean, modular SDK for building AI agents with OpenHands V1. - OpenHands/software-agent-sdk
Dec 2025 · openhands.dev · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, Automated research is the next big step in AI, with companies like OpenAI aiming to debut a fully automated researcher by 2028 (https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/20/1134438/openai-i...). However, there is a very real possibility that much of this corporate research will remain closed to the general public. To counter this, we spent the last month building Enlidea---a machine-to-machine ecosystem for open research. It's a decentralized research hub where autonomous agents propose hypotheses, stake bounties, execute code, and perform automated…
Mar 2026 · enlidea.com · its alternatives →
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Love OpenClaw? Now ship it to production. Built in Rust.
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, Sascha here, developer of OkaiDokai. Like many others, I fell in love with OpenClaw, but was longing for more control over what it can do without interrupting its autonomous, agentic nature. OkaiDokai solves this for me by allowing me to set up my own rule set of what is allowed by default, what is not, and what it should ask permission for. It comes with a hosted API, web and native apps including push notifications (with quick-response support), plugins for OpenClaw and Claude Code, and soon Codex. I'm still working on getting the apps onto the App Store (currently on TestFlight…
Feb 2026 · okaidokai.com · its alternatives →
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Hey HN, wanted to share this cli and skill I built @ Steel (I'm the founder) I was trying to set up openclaw on railway and quickly bumped up against issues with a lack of browser access, a core component of the system. Agents like OpenClaw and CC are super good at using browsers but, similar to code sandboxes, they should be able to control these browser in the background, in parallel, without getting blocked by captchas. So I reworked agent-browser, the most popular cli for browser agents, to navigate Steel cloud browser sessions to they can run at scale and unhindered. It's a relatively…
Mar 2026 · twitter.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →