AI · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Vy by Vercept

Hi HN, I am Kiana, I was an AI researcher for 10 years, and since last November I have been working on Vy. Vy is a desktop app for Mac and Windows. It sees your screen and controls mouse and keyboard to automate workflows across apps, including ones without APIs. I know there is a lot of skepticism about AI agents, and I share some of it. A lot of things in this space look impressive in demos and then fall apart on real, boring work. So here are a few concrete things that Vy does today that we and early users actually rely on: Where it works best Tasks that you could explain in a paragraph…

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.

1. 1
   v0 for iOS▲655

   While using iTerm2 while busy working today, I once again felt frustrated by having too many tabs and losing the overall perspective of what tasks were in progress. So, I used v0 + Opus 4.5 to envision an ideal Terminal tab management UI in my mind, to demonstrate the best way for me to manage tabs in the terminal. What do you think?

   Oct 2025 · v0.app · its alternatives →

2. 2
   Donely ▲220

   Hey HN, I'm Harsha, founder of Donely (https://donely.ai). What is Donely? Donely is an AI agent that lives on your Mac. It sees your screen, detects tasks in real-time, and autonomously executes them using your apps—think Jarvis for macOS. It monitors your workflow, answers questions with full context, and completes tasks with one-click approvals. The New Feature: Remote Computer Use Today we're shipping remote access. You can now control your Donely-powered Mac from anywhere through our web app. Whether you're traveling or away from your desk, you can kick off automation tasks on…

   Mar 2026 · donely.ai · its alternatives →

3. 3
   Vy – a powerful but retro and minimalist IDE▲143

   A vim-like in Python. Contribute to vyapp/vy development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

4. 4
   Agentlyfree tier, from $33/mo▲336

   Agently is an AI Work OS where documents, tasks, team chat, and integrations are fully interconnected, and AI employees operate inside that shared workspace. Instead of prompting AI in isolation, agents can read project context, turn strategy docs into tasks, coordinate with teammates, run research/outreach/content workflows, update boards, and push results back into the system or external tools. The workspace acts as persistent memory, so work continues instead of resetting every prompt. Happy to answer any questions

   Jul 2026 · agently.dev · its alternatives →

5. 5
   Velozity▲450

   Multiplayer platform for your teams and AI Agents.

   Sep 2026 · getvelozity.com · its alternatives →

6. 6
   Agent-desktop – Native desktop automation CLI for AI agents▲99

   I've been building computer-use tools for a while, and I quietly launched this about a month ago (122 Stars on GH). I figured it was worth sharing here. Over the last few months, a lot of computer-use agents have come out: Codex, Claude Code, CUA, and others. Most of them seem to work roughly like this: 1. Take a screenshot 2. Have the model predict pixel coordinates 3. Click x,y 4. Take another screenshot 5. Repeat That works, but it's slow, expensive in tokens, and fragile. If the UI shifts a few pixels, things break. And the model still doesn't know what any element actually is. But the…

   May 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

7. 7
   Venn.ai▲336

   Delegate real work to AI agents with safety guardrails

   Mar 2026 · venn.ai · its alternatives →

8. 8
   Velozity▲299

   AI Powered Instant User Validation got better and faster

   2025 · velozity.co · its alternatives →

9. 9
   Osaurus▲534

   Open source agents that run 100% locally on your Mac

   Jul 2026 · osaurus.ai · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Cline Desktop Appfree tier▲265

    An open-source app for open-weight models

    Sep 2026 · cline.bot · its alternatives →

11. 11
    AI Playground by Vercel Labs▲249

    Hey, Jared Palmer (creator of this playground) here. Really excited to ship this. I’ve been building this over the past few weeks to compare LLMs from different providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, etc. At Vercel, I manage our Frameworks division (including Next.js, Svelte, and Turbo) and wanted to also dogfood some of the latest features in a slightly larger application. This playground takes a lot of inspiration from https://nat.dev and is built on Tailwind, ui.shadcn.com, and some upcoming Vercel products we’re announcing soon. We’re going to continue adding models to…

    2023 · play.vercel.ai · its alternatives →

12. 12
    Alice▲426

    Alice is a native app that lets you chat with different AI models, install Assistants and communicate with the sofware you use. Try it now >>

    2024 · heyalice.app · its alternatives →

13. 13
    NeuralAgent▲168

    Your AI Teammate that actually uses your computer.

    Dec 2025 · getneuralagent.com · its alternatives →

14. 14
    Augy▲12

    A GUI macOS desktop agent app with local vm

    2025 · its alternatives →

15. 15
    Vany▲108

    Hey HN - long-time reader, first-time poster, My friends and I built Vany, a tool that responds to any LLM query with a TikTok – essentially a short narrated video answer to your prompt. We built it because we often prefer watching a short video over reading a block of text or long article. There are many impressive AI video tools out there that generate visually striking content for creators, but we wanted something that gives helpful videos back to the queries we put into LLMs or search engines every day. Vany lets anyone quickly get an engaging and useful video back to any question –…

    2025 · vany.ai · its alternatives →

16. 16
    AI Playground▲159

    Finding notes fast is still hard. You can organize with tags, PARA, or backlinks, but searching always feels slow and frustrating. That’s why I built ConniePad - native app on macOS & iOS. It works offline and lets you capture notes quickly anywhere. It has a comprehensive editor and local speech-to-text on iOS, so you can jot down ideas even without internet. But capturing notes is only half the story. What about finding what you need? ConniePad uses AI search. You can type queries like you would in Google or ChatGPT. It understands similar words, wrong typos, and abbreviations, so you get…

    2025 · veed.io · its alternatives →

17. 17
    Flowly▲219

    Your personal AI assistant, native to your desktop

    May 2026 · useflowlyapp.com · its alternatives →

18. 18
    Output▲97

    Hey HN, After months of building, we're excited to share Output — the first AI agent that can truly control your computer. You can speak or type instructions like: “Fill out this job application using the info in this PDF” “Edit this video in DaVinci Resolve” “Schedule a Zoom call and send the invite” Output understands your intent and directly clicks, types, and navigates apps across your system — without relying on scripts, plugins, or integrations. It's like giving your computer a brain. Works on both Mac and Windows No setup or scripting required Handles real apps like Chrome, Excel,…

    2025 · theoutput.co · its alternatives →

19. 19
    Friendware▲190

    Hey HN, I built Friendware because I wanted autocomplete that works everywhere on my Mac, not just in code editors. In any text field it can draft replies, rewrite text, and write prompts for AI tools; it uses on-screen context to adjust based on what you’re doing. My goal was making it feel native and not require workflow changes, so it stays accessible across apps by living in the notch. Currently working on better voice learning and a memory system, would love feedback on what to prioritize!

    Jan 2026 · friendware.ai · its alternatives →

20. 20
    Clicky▲144

    AI buddy next to your cursor on Mac—sees, guides, helps you!

    Apr 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

21. 21
    Velane▲95

    n8n is built for humans dragging nodes on a canvas. That breaks down at B2B scale (embedding in a product, multi-tenant scalability, etc). n8n does have an MCP server so agents can create workflows too, but it outputs raw JSON. That's fine for n8n's engine, but painful for a coding agent (or a human reviewing its output) to read, write, diff, or debug. I'm building an alternative where workflows are authored by a coding agent in [a more dev-legible format] instead of JSON blobs, and execute it at scale.

    Jul 2026 · velane.sh · its alternatives →

22. 22
    LapuAi▲68

    Desktop-native AI agent for every app, file & browser

    Jul 2026 · lapu.ai · its alternatives →

23. 23
    Tine▲79

    An AI desktop cursor that does the work for you

    Jun 2026 · its alternatives →

24. 24MW
    macOS/Windows AI app that sees, performs actions, and suggests files▲20

    Hey Hacker News, my name is Vlad: https://twitter.com/Fortune_VY We’ve been working on IDEs AI assistants for a few years https://www.machinet.net/. Yeah, years :) before chatGPT came along. We have learned a lot about AI models, and how the autoregressive nature coupled with the inability to switch an abstraction level throws a wrench in the works of a possible truly autonomous AI assistant, even OpenAI has featured us on their blog. The more we tinkered with the assistant problem for IDEs, the more we realized the gap between our dream assistant and chatGPT is…

    2023 · mate-os.com · its alternatives →

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 →